Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-n8gtw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-11T11:31:57.856Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Trading particle shape with fluid symmetry: on the mobility matrix in 3-D chiral fluids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2024

Tali Khain
Affiliation:
James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Michel Fruchart
Affiliation:
James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Gulliver, ESPCI Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, 75005 Paris, France
Colin Scheibner
Affiliation:
James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Center for the Physics of Biological Function, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Thomas A. Witten
Affiliation:
James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Vincenzo Vitelli*
Affiliation:
James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
*
Email address for correspondence: vitelli@uchicago.edu

Abstract

Chiral fluids – such as fluids under rotation or a magnetic field as well as synthetic and biological active fluids – flow in a different way than ordinary ones. Due to symmetries broken at the microscopic level, chiral fluids may have asymmetric stress and viscosity tensors, for example giving rise to a hydrostatic torque or non-dissipative (odd) and parity-violating viscosities. In this article, we investigate the motion of rigid bodies in such an anisotropic fluid in the incompressible Stokes regime through the mobility matrix, which encodes the response of a solid body to forces and torques. We demonstrate how the form of the mobility matrix, which is usually determined by particle geometry, can be analogously controlled by the symmetries of the fluid. By computing the mobility matrix for simple shapes in a three-dimensional (3-D) anisotropic chiral fluid, we predict counterintuitive phenomena such as motion at an angle to the direction of applied forces and spinning under the force of gravity.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Figure 0

Figure 1. Rigid body motion in a chiral fluid. (a) A fluid composed of particles driven to spin with angular velocity $\boldsymbol {\varOmega ^{{int}}}$, for example due to an external magnetic field, is chiral. Since the microscopic constituents of the fluid break parity or mirror symmetry, the stress and viscosity tensors of the fluid no longer need be symmetric. (b) As a result, the way a rigid body moves and rotates under applied forces and torques is modified.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Spatial symmetries constrain the mobility matrix. (a i) An ellipsoid in an isotropic fluid has an anisotropic mobility matrix, with different drag coefficients along and perpendicular to its long axis. (a ii) A sphere in an anisotropic fluid composed of ellipsoids has the same spatial symmetries. As a result, the two mobility matrices must have the same form. (b) A conical helix in (i) an isotropic fluid has the same spatial symmetries as a cone in (ii) a fluid composed of conical helices. As a result, the two mobility matrices must have the same form; in particular, both objects spin under applied forces. (Note that an ellipsoid in a fluid composed of conical helices would not break sufficient symmetries.) (c i) A non-chiral object, such as a cone, has zero $B$ and $T$ blocks in an isotropic fluid. (c ii) In a parity-violating (chiral) fluid, the same cone now has $T \neq 0$, meaning that applied forces lead it to rotate.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Comparison between theory and the Stokeslet method for modelling a rigid sphere with odd viscosity. (a) The sphere is built out of $N$ Stokeslets uniformly distributed on its surface. (b) The flow field outside the sphere for $N=1000$ Stokeslets (i) without and (ii) with odd viscosity $\eta ^{{o}}$. By covering the sphere with ‘odd’ Stokeslets (Stokeslets computed in the presence of a non-zero odd viscosity), one can successfully model a rigid sphere in an odd viscous flow as done for the standard fluid. (c) The mobility matrix entries for the sphere as a function of $N$. The off-diagonal terms (in blue) are non-zero only in the presence of $\eta ^{{o}}$. As $N$ increases, the drag coefficients converge to the theoretical values (dashed lines), even in the case of odd viscosity. For these computations, $R = 1, a = 0.001, \eta ^o/\mu = 0.1$.

Figure 3

Figure 4. A triple helix propelled in a fluid with torque density. (a) If the axis of the helix is aligned with the torque direction, the helix rotates about and moves along this axis. The velocity of propulsion is linear in $\tau$, as evident from (4.5). (b) If the torque and helix axis are orthogonal to each other, the helix still experiences propulsion along the torque direction, although it is weaker and with an opposite sign. In both cases, the chirality of the helix (red versus blue curves) flips the sign of the velocity response.

Figure 4

Figure 5. A sphere experiences lift in a chiral fluid in the Stokes regime. (a) If the direction of a force acting on the sphere is misaligned with the axis of odd viscosity ($\boldsymbol {\varOmega ^{{int}}}$), the sphere moves at angle to the force. For example, if placed in a radial potential, $U$, such as due to optical tweezers, the sphere follows a bending path to the centre. (b) Trajectories of the sphere from (5.17)–(5.18) with $\boldsymbol {\varOmega ^{{int}}} = \varOmega ^{{int}}_z \hat {\boldsymbol {z}}$ for different values of the odd viscosity. In the absence of odd viscosity, the sphere moves straight to the origin. If $\eta ^{{o}} \neq 0$, the sphere's motion has a component in the $-\boldsymbol {\hat {y}}$ direction, even though the force acts in $\boldsymbol {\hat {x}}$. If the odd viscosity is significantly increased (Everts & Cichocki 2024), the sphere follows a spiralling trajectory (red).

Figure 5

Figure 6. A sedimenting triangle spins in a chiral fluid. (a) In a standard fluid, a triangle composed of three Stokeslets, indicated by black points, falls vertically without rotating. (Note that the Stokeslet size is exaggerated for visualization purposes.) (b) In the presence of odd viscosity, the triangle rotates with angular speed $\varOmega _z$ proportional to the applied vertical force $F_z$. The triangle rotates in the opposite direction if the odd viscosity changes sign and if the triangle's orientation is flipped. (c) Under a torque density without odd viscosity, the triangle rotates in the same direction irrespective of its orientation. (d) The angular velocity $\varOmega$ of the triangle under applied torque depends on $\delta$, the ratio of the Stokeslet radius and the side length of the triangle $b$. In (i), $b = 1$, and in (ii), $\delta = 0.01$. (e i) The angular velocity of the triangle under an applied vertical force depends linearly on the odd viscosity ratio $\varepsilon$. Here, $b=1$ and $\delta = 0.01$. (e ii) The angular velocity of the triangle likewise depends on $b$. Here, $\delta = 0.01, \varepsilon = 0.1$. (f) In an isotropic fluid without odd viscosity, the rotation of a helix (i) under a force is equal to the velocity of the helix (ii) under a torque, $T_{33} = B_{33}$. (g) In a fluid with odd viscosity, the rotation of a triangle under a force is opposite to the velocity of the triangle under a torque, $T_{33} = -B_{33}$.

Figure 6

Figure 7. Stokeslet objects. (a) A conical helix consisting of three strands of Stokeslets. The associated mobility matrix in an isotropic fluid is given in (C4). (b) A ‘pushpin’-like object built out of Stokeslets. The associated mobility matrix in a parity-violating fluid is given in (C5).

Figure 7

Figure 8. Comparison of sphere trajectory in the perturbative limit to the exact solution. The perturbative case is from § 5figure 5(b) and the exact solution is from (12) in Everts & Cichocki (2024). In (a), the viscosity ratio is taken to be $\eta ^{{o}}/\mu = 0.1$, and in (b), $\eta ^{{o}}/\mu = 10$. The two curves agree well for small odd viscosity (a). At high odd viscosity (b), the perturbative solution diverges from the exact solution.