A statistical physics view of swarming bacteria

ZOOM link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89236785442

A statistical physics view of swarming bacteria

Avraham Be'er, Ben Gurion University

Bacterial swarming constitutes one of the most studied examples of active matter, which is a broad class of non-equilibrium many-body system. Swarming is a complex group phenomenon during which thousands of self-propelled microscopic cells move collectively on surfaces in coherent whirls and flows, showing a variety of intricate effects. Why bacteria move that way, and how they cooperate to form this collective motion, are the two major questions that lie at the basis of my research. However, current active matter models fall short of explaining even the basic results obtained in experiments. For example, although swarming is not species-specific, some quantitative, and even qualitative results differ between mutants and species whose physics is very similar, suggesting a coupling between the physical and biological aspect of swarming. The talk intends to provide a field guide to the physics underlying bacterial swarming. I will introduce the phenomenon and describe some of the principle physical aspects of the dynamics. The conclusions stemming from the studies show the crucial contribution of physical mechanisms to this biological phenomenon.