Gyrotaxis in a Steady Vortical Flow
Name
Durham-2011-Gyrotaxis in a Stead.pdf
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2.52 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Durham, William M.
Climent, Eric
Stocker, Roman
Date Issued
June 2011
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Durham, William, Eric Climent, and Roman Stocker. “Gyrotaxis in a Steady Vortical Flow.” Physical Review Letters 106 (2011). © 2011 American Physical Society.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We show that gyrotactic motility within a steady vortical flow leads to tightly clustered aggregations of microorganisms. Two dimensionless numbers, characterizing the relative swimming speed and stability against overturning by vorticity, govern the coupling between motility and flow. Exploration of parameter space reveals a striking array of patchiness regimes. Aggregations are found to form within a few overturning time scales, suggesting that vortical flows might be capable of efficiently separating species with different motility characteristics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.238102
