2007/05/24 by Chris Pooley, C. M. Pooley, Gareth P. Alexander +6
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Micro and Nano Robotics #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) #Other Quantitative Biology (q-bio.OT) #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.other #cond-mat.soft #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.OT
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0705.3612
6 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2007/05/24 · openalex publication_date 2007/05/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the hydrodynamic interactions between microorganisms swimming at low Reynolds number. By considering simple model swimmers, and combining analytic and numerical approaches, we investigate the time-averaged flow field around a swimmer. At short distances the swimmer behaves like a pump. At large distances the velocity field depends on whether the swimming stroke is invariant under a combined time-reversal and parity transformation. We then consider two swimmers and find that the interaction between them consists of two parts; a dead term, independent of the motion of the second swimmer, which takes the expected dipolar form and a live term resulting from the simultaneous swimming action of both swimmers which does not. We argue that, in general, the latter dominates. The swimmer--swimmer interaction is a complicated function of their relative displacement, orientation and phase, leading to motion that can be attractive, repulsive or oscillatory.