Synchronisation, waves and information transfer in arrays of active oscillators - from biological motile cilia in tissues to driven colloidal particles

This talk will present our work bridging between (a) experiments carried out on biological systems of ciliated epithelium, typical of the human respiratory tract and the brain ventricles, where motile cilia reside and generate fluid flow, and (b) very minimal physics-based models of coupled oscillators, representing actively driven colloidal particles. This link aims to explain how synchronisation can happen across large distances in the epithelium, and specifically how the dynamical state can be one that helps to drive fluid flows.
The simplistic physical model is an out of equilibrium system – we will show numerically that in specific spatial layouts of oscillators (well designed arrays) it is possible to engineer an asymmetric propagation of information (where here “information” is measured as the coherence to an external signal applied at an input node), and thereby perhaps set the grounds for information processing in this class of network systems.

Speaker: Prof. Pietro Cicuta (Cambridge University)

When: 29^th September at 15:00

Where: Aula C – 1^st floor, Physics Department