Circularly confined microswimmers exhibit multiple global patterns.

Abstract

Geometric confinement plays an important role in the dynamics of natural and synthetic microswimmers from bacterial cells to self-propelled particles in high-throughput microfluidic devices. However, little is known about the effects of geometric confinement on the emergent global patterns in such self-propelled systems. Recent experiments on bacterial cells report that, depending on the cell concentration, cells either spontaneously organize into vortical motion in thin cylindrical and spherical droplets or aggregate at the inner boundary of the droplets. Our goal in this paper is to investigate, in the context of an idealized physical model, the interplay between geometric confinement and level of flagellar activity on the emergent collective patterns. We show that decreasing flagellar activity induces a hydrodynamically triggered transition in confined microswimmers from swirling to global circulation (vortex) to boundary aggregation and clustering. These results highlight that the complex interplay between confinement, flagellar activity, and hydrodynamic flows in concentrated suspensions of microswimmers could lead to a plethora of global patterns that are difficult to predict from geometric consideration alone.