Alignment-induced self-organization of autonomously steering microswimmers: Turbulence, clusters, vortices, and jets

Microorganisms can sense their environment and adapt their movement accordingly, which gives rise to a multitude of collective phenomena, including active turbulence and bioconvection. In fluid environments, collective self-organization is governed by hydrodynamic interactions. By large-scale mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, we study the collective motion of polar microswimmers, which align their propulsion direction by hydrodynamic steering with that of their neighbors. The simulations of the employed squirmer model reveal a distinct dependence on the type of microswimmer—puller or pusher—flow field. No global polar alignment emerges in both cases. Instead, the collective motion of pushers is characterized by active turbulence, with nearly homogeneous density and a Gaussian velocity distribution; strong self-steering enhances the local coherent movement of microswimmers and leads to local fluid-flow speeds much larger than the individual swim speed. Pullers exhibit a strong tendency for clustering and display velocity and vorticity distributions with fat exponential tails; their dynamics is chaotic, with a temporal appearance of vortex rings and fluid jets. Our results show that the collective behavior of autonomously steering microswimmers displays a rich variety of dynamic self-organized structures. Our results imply guidelines for the design of microrobotic systems.