Circular swimming motility and disordered hyperuniform state in an algae system

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2021-05, Vol.118 (18), p.1-8
• Main Authors: Huang, Mingji, Hu, Wensi, Yang, Siyuan, Liu, Quan-Xing, Zhang, H. P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algae; Computational fluid dynamics; Density; Flagella; Fluctuations; Fluid flow; Interfaces; Internal energy; Mathematical models; Numerical models; Physical Sciences; Scandals; Self-assembly; Swimming
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2100493118

Active matter comprises individually driven units that convert locally stored energy into mechanical motion. Interactions between driven units lead to a variety of nonequilibrium collective phenomena in active matter. One of such phenomena is anomalously large density fluctuations, which have been observed in both experiments and theories. Here we show that, on the contrary, density fluctuations in active matter can also be greatly suppressed. Our experiments are carried out with marine algae (Effrenium voratum), which swim in circles at the air–liquid interfaces with two different eukaryotic flagella. Cell swimming generates fluid flow that leads to effective repulsions between cells in the far field. The long-range nature of such repulsive interactions suppresses density fluctuations and generates disordered hyperuniform states under a wide range of density conditions. Emergence of hyperuniformity and associated scaling exponent are quantitatively reproduced in a numerical model whose main ingredients are effective hydrodynamic interactions and uncorrelated random cell motion. Our results demonstrate the existence of disordered hyperuniform states in active matter and suggest the possibility of using hydrodynamic flow for self-assembly in active matter.