Zonal flows and reversals of cortically confined active suspensions

Abstract

At sufficiently high concentrations, motile bacteria suspended in fluids exhibit a range of ordered and disordered collective motions. Here we explore the combined effects of confinement, periodicity and curvature induced by the active motion of E. coli bacteria in a thin spherical shell (cortex) of an oil-water-oil (O/B/O) double emulsion drop. Confocal microscopy of the bacterial flow fields shows that at high density and activity, they exhibit azimuthal zonal flows which oscillate between counterclockwise and clockwise circulating states. We characterize these oscillatory patterns via their Fourier spectra and the distributions of their circulation persistence times. To explain our observations, we used numerical simulations of active particles and characterize the two-dimensional phase space of bacterial packing fraction and activity associated with persistent collective motions. All together, our study shows how geometric effects lead to new types of collective dynamics.