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SUMMARY:Active mixing in laminar flows:  How is a swimming microbe like a 
 forest fire? - Tom Solomon\, Bucknell University
DTSTART:20240328T130000Z
DTEND:20240328T140000Z
UID:TALK209902@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Marco Vona
DESCRIPTION:We present experiments on the effects of laminar flows on the 
 motion of swimming microbes and on the motion of the excitable Belousov-Zh
 abotinsky chemical reaction. This is a topic with applications to a wide r
 ange of systems including microfluidic chemical reactors\, self-assembly o
 f novel materials\, blooms of harmful algae in the oceans\, and the effect
 s of moving populations on the spreading of a disease.  A universal theore
 tical framework of active mixing predicts invariant manifolds -- “burnin
 g invariant manifolds” (BIMs) for front propagation and “swimming inva
 riant manifolds” (SwIMs) for self-propelled tracers -- that act as one-w
 ay barriers for both of these systems.  In fact\, the problem of front pro
 pagation is a special case of the more general\, active mixing theory. We 
 present results from several experiments:  (a) BIMs blocking reaction fron
 ts in a range of 2-D and 3-D vortex-dominated flows\; (b) SwIMs blocking m
 otion of swimming bacteria and eukaryotic microbes in a microfluidic hyper
 bolic flow in a cross channel\; and (c ) on-going experiments about the be
 havior of swimming microbes in vortex flows.
LOCATION:MR15\,  Centre for Mathematical Sciences\, Wilberforce Road\, Cam
 bridge
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