Kavli Affiliate: Sander Tans
| First 5 Authors: Duco van Holthe tot Echten, Gerhard Nordemann, Martijn Wehrens, Sander Tans, Timon Idema
| Summary:
Colonies of rod-shaped bacteria constitute a system of colloidal active
matter with nematic properties. As a single initial bacterium multiplies
through repeated divisions, the resulting colony quickly loses long-range
orientational order, but retains locally ordered domains. At the boundaries of
these domains, topological defects emerge, that themselves move around randomly
as the colony grows. In both experiments and simulations, we find that these
defects are created at a rate that corresponds to the exponential growth of the
colony, resulting in a stable defect density. We also characterize the
geometric and topological properties of bacterial colonies, from which we find
that the aspect ratio of the rod-shaped particles is the main regulator of both
the correlation length and the defect density. Moreover, we find that the
defect dynamics are well described by a Gamma distribution, which is due to
repeated divisions and subsequent re-orientations of the bacteria.
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