Instabilities and Waves in Thin Films of Living Fluids

Sankararaman, Sumithra and Ramaswamy, Sriram (2009) Instabilities and Waves in Thin Films of Living Fluids. In: Physical Review Letters, 102 (11).

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Abstract

We formulate the thin-film hydrodynamics of a suspension of polar self-driven particles and show that it is prone to several instabilities through the interplay of activity, polarity, and the existence of a free surface. Our approach extends, to self-propelling systems, the work of Ben Amar and Cummings [Phys. Fluids 13 1160 (2001)] on thin-film nematics. Based on our estimates the instabilities should be seen in bacterial suspensions and the lamellipodium, and are potentially relevant to the morphology of biofilms. We suggest several experimental tests of our theory.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Review Letters
Publisher:	The American Physical Society
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to The American Physical Society.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	25 Aug 2009 10:54
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:30
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/19793

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