Confined floating active carpets generate coherent vortical flows that enhance transport

Abstract

Slicks are thin viscous films that can be found at the air--water interface of water bodies such as lakes, rivers and oceans. These micro-layers are enriched in surfactants, organic matter, and microorganisms, and exhibit steep physical and chemical gradients across only tens to hundreds of micrometers. In such geometrically confined environments, the hydrodynamics and transport of nutrients, pollutants, and microorganisms are constrained, yet they collectively sustain key biogenic processes. It remains however largely unexplored how the hydrodynamic flows and transport are affected by the vertical extent of slicks relative to the size of microbial colonies. Here, we study this question by combining analytical and numerical approaches to model a microbial colony as an active carpet: a two-dimensional distribution of micro-swimmers exerting dipolar forces. We show that there exists a ratio between the carpet size and the confinement height that is optimal for the enhancement of particle transport toward the colony edges through advective flows that recirculate in 3D vortex-ring-like patterns with a characteristic length comparable to the confinement height. Our results demonstrate that finite, coherent vortex-ring-like structures can arise solely from the geometrical confinement ratio of slick thickness to microbial colony size. These findings shed light on the interplay between collective activity and out-of-equilibrium transport, and on how microbial communities form, spread, and persist in geometrically constrained environments such as surface slicks.