Does a stronger interaction always make for a more stable system? Certainly not for synchronising oscillators, as we show in a paper just accepted in Physical Review Fluids. There we study the behaviour of a strip of colloidal rotors as the system is lifted from a no-slip surface. As the hydrodynamic coupling strengthens, the system develop recurring phase defects which worsen its synchronisation. Our simulations show that defects result from a competition between short-range and long-range coupling. The paper is currently accessible through the ArXiv.

Update: The paper has been published (open access) and is now available here.

Our brief introduction to Chlamydomonas reinhardtii -aimed at physicists- is published in by the European Physical Journal as part of a Special Topics Issue on Microswimmers.