Hydrodynamic synchronization of colloidal oscillators used as models of cilia and flagella
| When |
Jan 13, 2015
from 10:45 to 12:00 |
|---|---|
| Where | Centre Blaise Pascal |
| Attendees |
Nicolas Bruot |
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The cooperative behaviour of driven oscillators is a key aspect of flow generation in artificial and biological systems at the micro scale. Flow can be driven efficiently by filaments undergoing periodic motion. These filaments are typically colloidal-scale and semi-flexible. They have therefore many degrees of freedom and are subject to thermal noise. The question of cooperativity via the hydrodynamic interaction can however be addressed by simpler systems, such as individual driven spheres, in which the multiple degrees of freedom of the complex systems are coarse-grained into a few control parameters that can be tuned and understood theoretically. I will show results on several model oscillators, all made of colloids driven by optical tweezers. Those include the control of the state of synchronization, the generation of metachronal waves, and the observation of strong alignment properties of the oscillators.