AI Article Synopsis
- Suspending self-propelled "pushers" (like bacteria) in a liquid can reduce its viscosity, a phenomenon studied through various scientific methods.
- When the concentration of bacteria exceeds a critical threshold, significant collective movement occurs, leading to nonlinear flow characteristics.
- The study supports a theory that suggests confinement diminishes this instability, while also indicating that applying active liquid-crystal theory to these systems is not valid.
Article Abstract
Suspending self-propelled "pushers" in a liquid lowers its viscosity. We study how this phenomenon depends on system size in bacterial suspensions using bulk rheometry and particle-tracking rheoimaging. Above the critical bacterial volume fraction needed to decrease the viscosity to zero, [Formula: see text], large-scale collective motion emerges in the quiescent state, and the flow becomes nonlinear. We confirm a theoretical prediction that such instability should be suppressed by confinement. Our results also show that a recent application of active liquid-crystal theory to such systems is untenable.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7007524 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912690117 | DOI Listing |
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