In the microscopic world, taking the long, curvy detour can actually burn less energy than moving in a straight line.
arXiv · March 18, 2026 · 2603.16205
The Takeaway
While we are taught that a straight line is the most efficient path, researchers discovered that microscopic particles can 'hack' their environment by taking curved routes. These detours create collective fluid flows that help push the particles along, much like how birds save energy by flying in the wake of others.
From the abstract
We experimentally and theoretically study the thermodynamically optimal control of interacting multiple-particle systems, focusing on collections of colloidal particles individually confined in optical traps. We investigate protocols that transport the system between prescribed trap configurations within a fixed time in the most energy efficient way. For Markovian systems with conservative pairwise interactions, we establish a general result in the low-noise limit: optimal particle trajectories