No Arabic abstract
We study the 2D motion of colloidal dimers by single-particle tracking and compare the experimental observations obtained by bright-field microscopy to theoretical predictions for anisotropic diffusion. The comparison is based on the mean-square displacements in the laboratory and particle frame as well as generalizations of the self-intermediate scattering functions, which provide insights into the rotational dynamics of the dimer. The diffusional anisotropy leads to a measurable translational-rotational coupling that becomes most prominent by aligning the coordinate system with the initial orientation of the particles. In particular, we find a splitting of the time-dependent diffusion coefficients parallel and perpendicular to the long axis of the dimer which decays over the orientational relaxation time. Deviations of the self-intermediate scattering functions from pure exponential relaxation are small but can be resolved experimentally. The theoretical predictions and experimental results agree quantitatively.
The orientational dynamics of inertialess anisotropic particles transported by two-dimensional convective turbulent flows display a coexistence of regular and chaotic features. We numerically demonstrate that very elongated particles (rods) align preferentially with the direction of the fluid flow, i.e., horizontally close to the isothermal walls and dominantly vertically in the bulk. This behaviour is due to the the presence of a persistent large scale circulation flow structure, which induces strong shear at wall boundaries and in up/down-welling regions. The near-wall horizontal alignment of rods persists at increasing the Rayleigh number, while the vertical orientation in the bulk is progressively weakened by the corresponding increase of turbulence intensity. Furthermore, we show that very elongated particles are nearly orthogonal to the orientation of the temperature gradient, an alignment independent of the system dimensionality and which becomes exact only in the limit of infinite Prandtl number. Tumbling rates are extremely vigorous adjacent to the walls, where particles roughly perform Jeffery orbits. This implies that the root-mean-square near-wall tumbling rates for spheres are much stronger than for rods, up to $mathcal{O}(10)$ times at $Rasimeq 10^9$. In the turbulent bulk the situation reverses and rods tumble slightly faster than isotropic particles, in agreement with earlier observations in two-dimensional turbulence.
The interplay between Coulomb friction and random excitations is studied experimentally by means of a rotating probe in contact with a stationary granular gas. The granular material is independently fluidized by a vertical shaker, acting as a heat bath for the Brownian-like motion of the probe. Two ball bearings supporting the probe exert nonlinear Coulomb friction upon it. The experimental velocity distribution of the probe, autocorrelation function, and power spectra are compared with the predictions of a linear Boltzmann equation with friction, which is known to simplify in two opposite limits: at high collision frequency, it is mapped to a Fokker-Planck equation with nonlinear friction, whereas at low collision frequency, it is described by a sequence of independent random kicks followed by friction-induced relaxations. Comparison between theory and experiment in these two limits shows good agreement. Deviations are observed at very small velocities, where the real bearings are not well modeled by Coulomb friction.
We review recent advances in rectification control of artificial microswimmers, also known as Janus particles, diffusing along narrow, periodically corrugated channels. The swimmer self-propulsion mechanism is modeled so as to incorporate a nonzero torque (propulsion chirality). We first summarize the effects of chirality on the autonomous current of microswimmers freely diffusing in channels of different geometries. In particular, left-right and upside-down asymmetric channels are shown to exhibit different transport properties. We then report new results on the dependence of the diffusivity of chiral microswimmers on the channel geometry and their own self-propulsion mechanism. The self-propulsion torque turns out to play a key role as a transport control parameter.
The analytical expressions for the time-dependent cross-correlations of the translational and rotational Brownian displacements of a particle with arbitrary shape are derived. The reference center is arbitrary, and the reference frame is such that the rotational-rotational diffusion tensor is diagonal.
Microswimmers exhibit noisy circular motion due to asymmetric propulsion mechanisms, their chiral body shape, or by hydrodynamic couplings in the vicinity of surfaces. Here, we employ the Brownian circle swimmer model and characterize theoretically the dynamics in terms of the directly measurable intermediate scattering function. We derive the associated Fokker-Planck equation for the conditional probabilities and provide an exact solution in terms of generalizations of the Mathieu functions. Different spatiotemporal regimes are identified reflecting the bare translational diffusion at large wavenumbers, the persistent circular motion at intermediate wavenumbers and an enhanced effective diffusion at small wavenumbers. In particular, the circular motion of the particle manifests itself in characteristic oscillations at a plateau of the intermediate scattering function for wavenumbers probing the radius.