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research article

Periodic Motion of Sedimenting Flexible Knots

Gruziel, Magdalena
•
Thyagarajan, Krishnan  
•
Dietler, Giovanni  
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2018
Physical Review Letters

We study the dynamics of knotted deformable closed chains sedimenting in a viscous fluid. We show experimentally that trefoil and other torus knots often attain a remarkably regular horizontal toroidal structure while sedimenting, with a number of intertwined loops, oscillating periodically around each other. We then recover this motion numerically and find out that it is accompanied by a very slow rotation around the vertical symmetry axis. We analyze the dependence of the characteristic timescales on the chain flexibility and aspect ratio. It is observed in the experiments that this oscillating mode of the dynamics can spontaneously form even when starting from a qualitatively different initial configuration. In numerical simulations, the oscillating modes are usually present as transients or final stages of the evolution, depending on chain aspect ratio and flexibility, and the number of loops.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.127801
Author(s)
Gruziel, Magdalena
Thyagarajan, Krishnan  
Dietler, Giovanni  
Stasiak, Andrzej
Ekiel-Jezewska, Maria L.
Szymczak, Piotr
Date Issued

2018

Publisher

APS

Published in
Physical Review Letters
Volume

121

Issue

12

Article Number

127801

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LPMV  
NAM  
Available on Infoscience
October 17, 2018
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/149124
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