Active bacterial baths in droplets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Villalobos-Concha, Cristian, Liu, Zhengyang, Ramos, Gabriel, Goral, Martyna, Lindner, Anke, López-León, Teresa, Clément, Eric, Soto, Rodrigo, Cordero, María Luisa
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Villalobos-Concha, Cristian
Liu, Zhengyang
Ramos, Gabriel
Goral, Martyna
Lindner, Anke
López-León, Teresa
Clément, Eric
Soto, Rodrigo
Cordero, María Luisa
author_facet Villalobos-Concha, Cristian
Liu, Zhengyang
Ramos, Gabriel
Goral, Martyna
Lindner, Anke
López-León, Teresa
Clément, Eric
Soto, Rodrigo
Cordero, María Luisa
contents Suspensions of self-propelled objects represent a novel paradigm in colloidal science. In such active baths traditional concepts, such as Brownian motion, fluctuation-dissipation relations, and work extraction from heat reservoirs, must be extended beyond the conventional framework of thermal baths. Unlike thermal baths, which are characterized by a single parameter, the temperature, the fundamental descriptors of an active bath remain elusive, especially in confined environments. In this study, buoyant, passive tracers are employed as generalized probes to investigate an active bath comprising motile bacteria confined within a droplet. We demonstrate that momentum transfer from the bath to the tracer can be effectively described as colored noise, characterized by temporal memory and an enhanced effective diffusivity significantly larger compared to thermal Brownian motion values. Using a stochastic analytical framework, we extract the temporal memory and diffusivity parameters that define such an active bath. Notably, the diffusivity scales linearly with bacterial concentration, modulated by a factor representing the role of confinement, expressed as the ratio of the confining radius to the probe radius. This finding, while still awaiting a complete theoretical explanation, offers new insights into the transport properties of confined active baths and paves the way for a deeper understanding of active emulsions driven by confined active matter.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_14088
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Active bacterial baths in droplets
Villalobos-Concha, Cristian
Liu, Zhengyang
Ramos, Gabriel
Goral, Martyna
Lindner, Anke
López-León, Teresa
Clément, Eric
Soto, Rodrigo
Cordero, María Luisa
Soft Condensed Matter
Suspensions of self-propelled objects represent a novel paradigm in colloidal science. In such active baths traditional concepts, such as Brownian motion, fluctuation-dissipation relations, and work extraction from heat reservoirs, must be extended beyond the conventional framework of thermal baths. Unlike thermal baths, which are characterized by a single parameter, the temperature, the fundamental descriptors of an active bath remain elusive, especially in confined environments. In this study, buoyant, passive tracers are employed as generalized probes to investigate an active bath comprising motile bacteria confined within a droplet. We demonstrate that momentum transfer from the bath to the tracer can be effectively described as colored noise, characterized by temporal memory and an enhanced effective diffusivity significantly larger compared to thermal Brownian motion values. Using a stochastic analytical framework, we extract the temporal memory and diffusivity parameters that define such an active bath. Notably, the diffusivity scales linearly with bacterial concentration, modulated by a factor representing the role of confinement, expressed as the ratio of the confining radius to the probe radius. This finding, while still awaiting a complete theoretical explanation, offers new insights into the transport properties of confined active baths and paves the way for a deeper understanding of active emulsions driven by confined active matter.
title Active bacterial baths in droplets
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.14088