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 give conflicting reports of cells spontaneously organizing into a spiral vortex in a thin cylindrical droplet and cells aggregating at the inner boundary in a spherical droplet. We investigate here, in 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.