Suspensions of motile E. coli bacteria serve as a model system to experimentally study the hydrodynamics of active particle suspensions. Colloidal probe particles are localised within a suspension of motile bacteria by use of optical tweezers and their uctuations are monitored. The activity of the bacteria effects the fluctuations of the probe particles and their correlation, revealing information about the hydrodynamics of the suspension. We highlight experimental problems that make the interpretation of 'single probe' experiments (as reported before in literature) diffcult and present some preliminary results for 'dual probe' cross-correlation experiments.

Conference on Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation II, AUG , 2005, San Diego, CA