Silvia Zaoli - Università di Padova #
Stochastic model for the motility of self-propelling particles #
The motility of microorganisms like bacteria and protists in liquid 
media is an important issue and it is not yet fully understood. Previous 
theoretical approaches dealing with ''microscopic'' description of the 
motion have modelled the propelling force exerted by the organism itself 
as a white noise term in the equation of motion. We will present 
experimental results for protists of the genus Colpidium, ciliates, 
which do not agree with the white noise hypothesis. We propose a new 
stochastic model that is in good agreement with the experimental 
statistical properties of ciliates' motion, such as velocity 
distribution, velocity autocorrelation and mean square displacement.