{"paper":{"title":"Viscotaxis: microswimmer navigation in viscosity gradients","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["physics.bio-ph"],"primary_cat":"cond-mat.soft","authors_text":"Benno Liebchen, Borge ten Hagen, Hartmut L\\\"owen, Paul Monderkamp","submitted_at":"2017-12-23T20:36:47Z","abstract_excerpt":"The survival of many microorganisms, like \\textit{Leptospira} or \\textit{Spiroplasma} bacteria, can depend on their ability to navigate towards regions of favorable viscosity. While this ability, called viscotaxis, has been observed in several bacterial experiments, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we provide a framework to study viscotaxis of self-propelled swimmers in slowly varying viscosity fields and show that suitable body shapes create viscotaxis based on a systematic asymmetry of viscous forces acting on a microswimmer. Our results shed new light on viscotaxis in \\textit"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1712.08835","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}