Soft Matter and Complex Systems Seminar

The geometric phase techniques for swimming in viscous flows express the net displacement of a swimmer as a path integral of a field in configuration space. This representation can be transformed into an area integral for simple swimmers using the Stokes theorem. Since this transformation applies for any loop, the integrand of this area integral can be used to help design these swimmers. However, the extension of this Stokes theorem technique to more complicated swimmers is hampered by problems with variables that do not commute and by how to visualise and understand the higher-dimensional spaces. In this talk I will introduce you to the general geometric swimming process and then develop novel methods to approach non-commuting variables and the visualisation of high dimensional spaces. In do so we will discuss the implications for our understanding of microscopic swimming and outline how it could be used to help with the design of swimmers.

The seminar will be held on Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82784273907