近期活动

Colloquium

Collective motion and density fluctuations in bacterial colonies

Hepeng Zhang 教授 University of Texas at Austin
Wed, 2010-04-21 15:00 - 16:00
上海交通大学闵行校区物理楼一楼学术报告厅(111室)

Collections of motile organisms such as flocking birds, schooling fish, and swarming bacteria often exhibit collective motion with extended spatiotemporal coherence. While there are many qualitative observations, quantitative measurements of such collective motion have been limited. We measure simultaneously the positions, velocities, and orientations of up to a thousand bacteria in a colony. The motile bacteria form closely-packed dynamic clusters within which they move cooperatively. The number of bacteria in a cluster exhibits a power-law distribution truncated by an exponential tail. Mobile clusters cause anomalous fluctuations in bacterial density, i.e., fluctuations N which vary with the mean N, not as N  N1/2 (as in a system in thermal equilibrium), but as N  N3/4.

Currently research associate, UT @ Austin, USA
Education: Ph.D. in Physics, City Univ. of New York, USA (2004)
B. Sc. in Physics, Fudan Univ., China (2000)
Research Interests: Fluid mechanics, biomechanics, fracture, granular and glassy materials.