Reentrant phase behavior in binary topological flocks with nonreciprocal alignment
Abstract
We study a binary metric-free Vicsek model involving two species of self-propelled particles aligning with their Voronoi neighbors, focusing on a weakly nonreciprocal regime, where species aligns with both and , but species does not align with either. Using agent-based simulations, we find that even with a small fraction of particles, the phase behavior of the system can be changed qualitatively, which becomes reentrant as a function of noise strength: traveling bands arise not only near the flocking transition, but also in the low-noise regime, separated in the phase diagram by a homogeneous polar liquid regime. We find that the ordered bands in the low-noise regime travel through an ordered background, in contrast to their metric counterparts. We develop a coarse-grained field theory, which can account for the reentrant phase behavior qualitatively, provided the higher-order angular modes are taken into consideration.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2412.11871,
title = {Reentrant phase behavior in binary topological flocks with nonreciprocal alignment},
author = {Tian Tang and Yu Duan and Yu-qiang Ma},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.11871},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Supplemental movies are available on request