| Contents |
| The collective dynamics of swimming microorganisms (``microswimmers'') such as bacteria and algal cells have been of considerable recent interest, both as paradigms of collective patterns arising from
individual autonomous agents and for their relevance to technological issues such as biofilm formation and power sources for microdevices. The dynamics of microswimmers have been examined through experiment, direct numerical simulations, and mean field theories. The mean field theories have shown a good degree of explanatory power, primarily through stability analysis of the isotropic state, but the mean field assumptions also restrict the theory's ability to describe the actual non-equilibrium steady states of the microswimmers. We will present some recent efforts to incorporate stochastic fluctuations and correlations into a continuum partial differential equation framework for the effective microswimmer dynamics in a suspension. To develop insight in this endeavor, we have thus far been developing these richer statistical descriptions for simpler microswimmer models than the usual models of force dipoles interacting through Stokes flow hydrodynamics. |
|