We study the hydrodynamic interaction between a microswimmer and a deformable interface when the swimmer can stochastically reorient itself. We consider a force- and torque-free swimmer, modeled as a slender body, that can execute random orientation tumbles or active Brownian rotations in the plane of the deformable interface. When the swimmer is in the more viscous fluid, our analysis shows that both tumbles and Brownian rotations acting on timescales comparable to that of interface deformations can lead to a pusher-type swimmer rotating away from the interface, while enhancing its attraction towards the interface. In turn, the intrinsic orientational stochasticity of the microswimmer favors a stronger migration of pushers towards the interface at short times, but migration away from the interface in the long-time limit. However, irrespective of the viscosity ratio of the two fluid medium, the tendency of a pusher to align parallel to the interface is suppressed; the results for puller-type swimmers are the opposite. Our study has potential consequences for the residence time of swimming microorganisms near deformable boundaries.

Microswimmers in a fluid are an example of an active suspension whereby the system is driven out of equilibrium though the interaction of the microswimmers with their surrounding environment. Here, the authors study the orientational microstructure of active suspensions in a viscoelastic fluid and show how the activity of the microswimmers can alter the bulk properties. Microswimmer suspensions in Newtonian fluids exhibit unusual macroscale properties, such as a superfluidic behavior, which can be harnessed to perform work at microscopic scales. Since most biological fluids are non-Newtonian, here we study the rheology of a microswimmer suspension in a weakly viscoelastic shear flow. At the individual level, we find that the viscoelastic stresses generated by activity substantially modify the Jeffery orbits well-known from Newtonian fluids. The orientational dynamics depends on the swimmer type; especially pushers can resist flow-induced rotation and align at an angle with the flow. To analyze its impact on bulk rheology, we study a dilute microswimmer suspension in the presence of random tumbling and rotational diffusion. Strikingly, swimmer activity and its elastic response in polymeric fluids alter the orientational distribution and substantially amplify the swimmer-induced viscosity. This suggests that pusher suspensions reach the superfluidic regime at lower volume fractions compared to a Newtonian fluid with identical viscosity.