Clustering of magnetic swimmers in a Poiseuille flow

We investigate the collective behavior of magnetic swimmers, which are suspended in a Poiseuille flow and placed under an external magnetic field, using analytical techniques and Brownian dynamics simulations. We find that the interplay between intrinsic activity, external alignment, and magnetic di...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Meng, F, Matsunaga, D, Golestanian, R
Format: Journal article
Published: American Physical Society 2018
Description
Summary:We investigate the collective behavior of magnetic swimmers, which are suspended in a Poiseuille flow and placed under an external magnetic field, using analytical techniques and Brownian dynamics simulations. We find that the interplay between intrinsic activity, external alignment, and magnetic dipole-dipole interactions leads to longitudinal structure formation. Our work sheds light on a recent experimental observation of a clustering instability in this system.