Vorticity Determines the Force on Bodies Immersed in Active Fluids

Abstract

When immersed into a fluid of active Brownian particles, passive bodies might start to undergo linear or angular directed motion depending on their shape. Here we exploit the divergence theorem to relate the forces responsible for this motion to the density and current induced by--but far away from--the body. In general, the force is composed of two contributions: due to the strength of the dipolar field component and due to particles leaving the boundary, generating a non-vanishing vorticity of the polarization. We derive and numerically corroborate results for periodic systems, which are fundamentally different from unbounded systems with forces that scale with the area of the system. We demonstrate that vorticity is localized close to the body and to points at which the local curvature changes, enabling the rational design of particle shapes with desired propulsion properties.