Instability of expanding bacterial droplets

Andrey Sokolov, Leonardo Dominguez Rubio, John F. Brady and Igor S. Aranson ()
Additional contact information
Andrey Sokolov: Argonne National Laboratory
Leonardo Dominguez Rubio: Pennsylvania State University
John F. Brady: California Institute of Technology
Igor S. Aranson: Argonne National Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Suspensions of motile bacteria or synthetic microswimmers, termed active matter, manifest a remarkable propensity for self-organization, and formation of large-scale coherent structures. Most active matter research deals with almost homogeneous in space systems and little is known about the dynamics of strongly heterogeneous active matter. Here we report on experimental and theoretical studies on the expansion of highly concentrated bacterial droplets into an ambient bacteria-free fluid. The droplet is formed beneath a rapidly rotating solid macroscopic particle inserted in the suspension. We observe vigorous instability of the droplet reminiscent of a violent explosion. The phenomenon is explained in terms of continuum first-principle theory based on the swim pressure concept. Our findings provide insights into the dynamics of active matter with strong density gradients and significantly expand the scope of experimental and analytic tools for control and manipulation of active systems.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03758-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-03758-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03758-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().