Dynamics of bacteria scanning a porous environment

Abstract

It has recently been reported that bacteria, such as E.coli and P. putida, perform distinct modes of motion when placed in porous media as compared to dilute regions or free space. This has led us to suggest an efficient strategy for active particles in a disordered environment: reorientations are suppressed in locally dilute regions and intensified in locally dense ones. Thereby the local geometry determines the optimal path of the active agent and substantially accelerates the dynamics for up to two orders of magnitude. We observe a non-monotonic behavior of the diffusion coefficient in dependence on the tumbling rate and identify a localisation transition, either by increasing the density of obstacles or by decreasing the reorientation rate.

5 pages, 5 figure. Movies can be accessed via: phi_obs0.4-sigmoid.webm: see https://nxcloud.omid.land/s/iDkDYGHwjczpZg9 phi_obs0.6-sigmoid.webm: see https://nxcloud.omid.land/s/eJQo8btyWQZ9nrA phi_obs0.4-uniform.webm: see https://nxcloud.omid.land/s/Fnp7cpGnm8JYqxX phi_obs0.6-uniform.webm: see https://nxcloud.omid.land/s/cBMgtL5QfYiXWZD

References in corpus (8)

• Hydrodynamic attraction of swimming microorganisms by surfaces
• Fluid dynamics and noise in bacterial cell-cell and cell-surface scattering
• Bacterial hopping and trapping in porous media
• The Localization Transition of the Two-Dimensional Lorentz Model
• Critical dynamics of ballistic and Brownian particles in a heterogeneous environment
• Dynamics of active filaments in porous media
• Rounding of the localization transition in model porous media
• Quorum-sensing active particles with discontinuous motility

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Active Brownian Particles in Random and Porous Environments
• Escape dynamics of confined undulating worms
• Collective dynamics of active dumbbells near a circular obstacle
• Optimal run-and-tumble in slit-like confinement