Taxis of Artificial Swimmers in a Spatio-Temporally Modulated Activation Medium

Abstract

Contrary to microbial taxis, where a tactic response to external stimuli is controlled by complex chemical pathways acting like sensor-actuator loops, taxis of artificial microswimmers is a purely stochastic effect associated with a non-uniform activation of the particles' self-propulsion. We study the tactic response of such swimmers in a spatio-temporally modulated activating medium by means of both numerical and analytical techniques. In the opposite limits of very fast and very slow rotational particle dynamics, we obtain analytic approximations that closely reproduce the numerical description. A swimmer drifts on average either parallel or anti-parallel to the propagation direction of the activating pulses, depending on their speed and width. The drift in line with the pulses is solely determined by the finite persistence length of the active Brownian motion performed by the swimmer, whereas the drift in the opposite direction results from the combination of ballistic and diffusive properties of the swimmer's dynamics.

arXiv comment19 pages, 6 figures; Entropy (in press)

References in corpus (24)

• Active Particles in Complex and Crowded Environments
• Self-motile colloidal particles: from directed propulsion to random walk
• Physics of Microswimmers - Single Particle Motion and Collective Behavior
• Active Motion of Janus Particle by Self-thermophoresis in Defocused Laser Beam
• Propulsion of a molecular machine by asymmetric distribution of reaction--products
• Microswimmers in Patterned Environments
• Active Brownian Motion Tunable by Light
• Brownian motion of a self-propelled particle
• Phototaxis of synthetic microswimmers in optical landscapes
• Gravitaxis of asymmetric self-propelled colloidal particles
• Electrokinetic Effects in Catalytic Pt-Insulator Janus Swimmers
• Biased diffusion in confined media: Test of the Fick-Jacobs approximation and validity criteria
• Locomotion of Electrocatalytic Nanomotors due to Reaction Induced Charge Auto-Electrophoresis
• Rheotaxis of spherical active particles near a planar wall
• Polarization of active Janus particles
• Engineering sensorial delay to control phototaxis and emergent collective behaviors
• Traveling-Wave Chemotaxis
• Chemotaxis of artificial microswimmers in active density waves
• Pseudo-Chemotactic Drifts of Artificial Microswimmers
• Clustering and phase behaviour of attractive active particles with hydrodynamics
• Self-Polarizing Microswimmers in Active Density Waves
• Kramers escape of a self-propelled particle
• Entropic transport - A test bed for the Fick-Jacobs approximation
• Shaping wave patterns in reaction-diffusion systems

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Active Brownian motion with orientation-dependent motility: theory and experiments
• Learning to Control Active Matter
• Theory of light-activated catalytic Janus particles
• Dynamics of active particles with space-dependent swim velocity
• Shape-dependent guidance of active Janus particles by chemically patterned surfaces
• Polarization-Density Patterns of Active Particles in Motility Gradients
• Spontaneous membrane formation and self-encapsulation of active rods in an inhomogeneous motility field
• Inertial self-propelled particles in anisotropic environments
• Colloidal Brazil nut effect in microswimmer mixtures induced by motility contrast
• Force-Free and Autonomous Active Brownian Ratchets
• Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Confined Systems