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Updated: Jan 2, 2026

Reconstitution of Basic Mitotic Spindles in Spherical Emulsion Droplets
Published on: August 13, 2016
Axisymmetric spheroidal squirmers and self-diffusiophoretic particles
R Pöhnl1,2,3, M N Popescu1, W E Uspal1,2,3
1Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Heisenbergstr. 3, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
Abstract:
We study, by means of an exact analytical solution, the motion of a spheroidal, axisymmetric squirmer in an unbounded fluid, as well as the low Reynolds number hydrodynamic flow associated to it. In contrast to the case of a spherical squirmer-for which, e.g. the velocity of the squirmer and the magnitude of the stresslet associated with the flow induced by the squirmer are respectively determined by the amplitudes of the first two slip ('squirming') modes-for the spheroidal squirmer each squirming mode either contributes to the velocity, or contributes to the stresslet. The results are straightforwardly extended to the self-phoresis of axisymmetric, spheroidal, chemically active particles in the case when the phoretic slip approximation holds.
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