Regensburg 2004 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 24: Dynamic Instabilities in Biophysics

DY 24.3: Vortrag

Dienstag, 9. März 2004, 15:15–15:30, H2

A Continuum Model for Bacterial Ripple Pattern Formation — •Uwe Börner and Markus Bär — Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme, Nöthnitzer Str. 38, 01187 Dresden

We study pattern forming instabilities in a continuum model of coupled hypberbolic partial differential equations that describe active motion and chemical interaction between starving myxobacteria. The decisive parameter is a refractory time during which bacteria are unable to respond to signals by other bacteria. It is shown that if the refractory time crosses a threshold value, an ensemble of bacteria experiences a density instability that is in line with the characteristic experimental rippling patterns. Moreover, we show that this instability is robust against the incorporation of diffusion and compares well to earlier simulation and mean-field results in the analogous discrete medium.