RT Journal Article
T1 Preventing clustering of active particles in microchannels
A1 Carrillo-Mora, Juan Pablo
A1 Pires Monteiro, Moniellen
A1 Marconi, V. I.
A1 Cordero, María Luisa
A1 Brito López, Ricardo
A1 Soto, Rodrigo
AB The trajectories of microswimmers moving in narrow channels of widths comparable to their sizes are significantly altered when they encounter another microswimmer moving in the opposite direction. The consequence of these encounters is a delay in the progress of both swimmers, which can be conceptualized as an instantaneous effective backward displacement. Similarly, the modeling of tumble events in bacteria, which occur over a finite time, can be represented as an instantaneous effective displacement in addition to a change in direction. Such effective displacements can be incorporated directly into a kinetic theory for the partial densities of swimmers moving in the channel. The linear analysis of the resulting equation yields the critical density at which clusters emerge. The methodology is then applied to the case of soil bacteria moving in long channels of cross-section 1.8 μm × 1.8 μm. The tracking of the swimmers permits the straightforward acquisition of the effective displacements, which in turn allows the critical density (ρcrit ≃ 0.10 bact/μm) to be predicted prior to cluster formation. The advantage of this proposed approach is that it does not necessitate the determination of an effective density-dependent speed, which is a requisite of the standard motilityinduced phase separation theory.
PB Nature
YR 2025
FD 2025-09-26
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/125803
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/125803
LA eng
NO Carrillo-Mora, J.P., Pires Monteiro, M., Marconi, V.I. et al. Preventing clustering of active particles in microchannels. Commun Phys 8, 374 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-025-02283-y
NO Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (Chile)
NO ANID Beca de Magister Nacional
NO ANID Fondequip
NO FONCyT (Chile)
NO CONICET (Argentina)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 26 feb 2026