Hydrodynamics of chiral squirmers

Abstract

Many microorganisms take a chiral path while swimming in an ambient uid. In this paper, we study the combined behavior of two chiral swimmers using the well-known squirmer model taking into account chiral asymmetries. In contrast to the simple squirmer model, which has an axisymmetric distribution of slip velocity, the chiral squirmer has additional asymmetries in the surface slip, which contribute to both translations and rotations of the motion. As a result, swimming trajectories can become helical and chiral asymmetries arise in the ow patterns. We study the swimming trajectories of a pair of chiral squirmers that interact hydrodynamically. This interaction can lead to attraction and repulsion, and in some cases even to bounded states where the swimmers continue to periodically orbit around a common average trajectory. Such bound states are a signature of the chiral nature of the swimmers. Our study could be relevant to the collective movements of ciliated microorganisms.

References in corpus (7)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
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• Propulsion of a molecular machine by asymmetric distribution of reaction--products
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Hydrodynamic Synchronisation of Chiral Microswimmers
• Unsteady chiral swimmer in presence of an external chemical gradient
• Diffraction and interference with run-and-tumble particles
• Near and far-field hydrodynamic interaction of two chiral squirmers