Symmetry-Breaking Motility

Abstract

Locomotion of bacteria by actin polymerization, and in vitro motion of spherical beads coated with a protein catalyzing polymerization, are examples of active motility. Starting from a simple model of forces locally normal to the surface of a bead, we construct a phenomenological equation for its motion. The singularities at a continuous transition between moving and stationary beads are shown to be related to the symmetries of its shape. Universal features of the phase behavior are calculated analytically and confirmed by simulations. Fluctuations in velocity are shown to be generically non-Maxwellian and correlated to the shape of the bead.

arXiv comment4 pages, 2 figures, REVTeX; formatting of references corrected

References in corpus (1)

• A Simplest Swimmer at Low Reynolds Number: Three Linked Spheres

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Stochastic Low Reynolds Number Swimmers
• Intrinsic Ratchets
• Spontaneous polarization in an interfacial growth model for actin filament networks with a rigorous mechano-chemical coupling
• Hubbard bands, Mott transition and deconfinement in strongly correlated systems
• Actin based propulsion: Intriguing interplay between material properties and growth processes
• On measurement of photon polarization in radiative penguin $B$ decays to baryons
• A constitutive law for cross-linked actin networks by homogenization techniques