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Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Forming, Confining, and Observing Microtubule-Based Active Nematics
Published on: January 13, 2023
Long-range nematic order and anomalous fluctuations in suspensions of swimming filamentous bacteria
Daiki Nishiguchi1, Ken H Nagai2, Hugues Chaté3,4
1Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo, Hongo 7-3-1, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
Abstract:
We study the collective dynamics of elongated swimmers in a very thin fluid layer by devising long filamentous nontumbling bacteria. The strong confinement induces weak nematic alignment upon collision, which, for large enough density of cells, gives rise to global nematic order. This homogeneous but fluctuating phase, observed on the largest experimentally accessible scale of millimeters, exhibits the properties predicted by standard models for flocking, such as the Vicsek-style model of polar particles with nematic alignment: true long-range nematic order and nontrivial giant number fluctuations.
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