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Emergence of upstream swimming via a hydrodynamic transition
Chih-Kuan Tung1, Florencia Ardon2, Anubhab Roy3
1Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Abstract:
We demonstrate that upstream swimming of sperm emerges via an orientation disorder-order transition. The order parameter, the average orientation of the sperm head against the flow, follows a 0.5 power law with the deviation from the critical flow shear rate (γ-γ_{c}). This transition is successfully explained by a hydrodynamic bifurcation theory, which extends the sperm upstream swimming to a broad class of near surface microswimmers that possess front-back asymmetry and circular motion.
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