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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 27: Fluid Physics 3 - organized by Stephan Weiss and Michael Wilczek (Göttingen)

DY 27.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 14:50–15:10, DYa

Hydrodynamically coupled cilia: synchronization and noise — •Anton Solovev and Benjamin M. Friedrich — TU Dresden, Germany

Motile cilia on ciliated epithelia in mammalian airways, brain ventricles and oviduct can display coordinated beating in the form of metachronal (=traveling) waves [1]. Past research proposed hydrodynamic coupling as a mechanism of synchronization, yet if such synchronization is stable in the presence of noise (corresponding to active fluctuations of cilia beating) has been addressed only for n=2 cilia [2], while the question of multi-stable synchronization in cilia carpets (n>>1) remains open.

Using multi-scale simulations [3] that map hydrodynamic interactions between cilia on a generalized Kuramoto model of phase oscillators with local coupling, we predict many multi-stable metachronal wave states, yet only one or two of them have considerable basins of attraction.

In the presence of noise, we observe stochastic transitions between different waves [4]. Active noise excites long-wavelength perturbations (which take relatively long time to decay). Strong noise impedes global synchronization and causes a break-up into smaller synchronized patches (similar to a chimera state).

[1] W. Gilpin, M.S. Bull, and M. Prakash, Nat Rev Phys 2, 74 (2020)

[2] R. Ma et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 048101 (2014)

[3] A. Solovev, B.M. Friedrich, preprint arXiv:2010.08111 (2020)

[4] A. Solovev, B.M. Friedrich, preprint arXiv:2012.11741 (2020)