Speaker
Description
Active matter, consisting of self-propelled particles and swimming microorganisms, demonstrates complex dynamics in flow environments. These dynamics are essential for understanding both biological and technical systems. We present computational results on the dynamics and active Taylor dispersion of swimming E. coli bacteria in 3D microchannel Poiseuille flow under varying Péclet numbers, which correspond to different flow conditions and lead to distinct diffusive regimes.
We first recover by applying a steady Poiseuille flow classical Taylor dispersion of passive particles, as well as active Taylor dispersion of active Brownian particles. We then demonstrate the effect of bacterial chirality on the effective diffusion, which reduces long-time diffusion but shows similar scaling with increase of Péclet as for non-chiral microswimmers. We further discuss the influence of time-periodic flow on the dispersion of swimming bacteria, introducing an additional time scale to the system.