Related papers: Asymmetric exchange in flocks
As the constituent particles of a flock are polar and in a driven state, their interactions must, in general, be fore-aft asymmetric and non-reciprocal. Within a model that explicitly retains the classical spin angular momentum field of the…
It is suggested that the observed scale-free correlations of speed fluctuations in flocks of birds are a consequence of the spontaneous breakdown of translational symmetry to a discrete group, and not an indication that the system is near a…
Flocking is a paradigmatic example of collective animal behaviour, where decentralized interaction rules give rise to a globally ordered state. In the emergence of order out of self-organization we find similarities between biological…
When birds come together to form a flock, the distribution of their individual velocities narrows around the mean velocity of the flock. We argue that, in a broad class of models for the joint distribution of positions and velocities, this…
When animal groups move coherently in the form of a flock, their trajectories are not all parallel, the individuals exchange their position in the group. In this Letter we introduce a measure of this mixing dynamics, which we quantify as…
Many systems in nature, from ferromagnets to flocks of birds, exhibit ordering phenomena on the large scale. In physical systems order is statistically robust for large enough dimensions, with relative fluctuations due to noise vanishing…
Computational models of collective behavior in birds has allowed us to infer interaction rules directly from experimental data. Using a generic form of these rules we explore the collective behavior and emergent dynamics of a simulated…
Birds in a flock move in a correlated way, resulting in large polarization of velocities. A good understanding of this collective behavior exists for linear motion of the flock. Yet observing actual birds, the center of mass of the group…
We show that even weak nonreciprocal alignment leads to large-scale structure formation in flocking mixtures. By combining numerical simulations of a binary Vicsek model and the analysis of coarse-grained continuum equations, we demonstrate…
One of the most impressive features of moving animal groups is their ability to perform sudden coherent changes in travel direction. While this collective decision can be a response to an external perturbation, such as the presence of a…
The correlated motion of flocks is an instance of global order emerging from local interactions. An essential difference with analogous ferromagnetic systems is that flocks are active: animals move relative to each other, dynamically…
Flocking, as paradigmatically exemplified by birds, is the coherent collective motion of active agents. As originally conceived, flocking emerges through alignment interactions between the agents. Here, we report that flocking can also…
Bird flocking is a striking example of collective animal behaviour. A vivid illustration of this phenomenon is provided by the aerial display of vast flocks of starlings gathering at dusk over the roost and swirling with extraordinary…
Collective decision-making in biological systems requires all individuals in the group to go through a behavioural change of state. During this transition, the efficiency of information transport is a key factor to prevent cohesion loss and…
We study the stability of the ordered phase of flocking models with a scalar order parameter. Using both the active Ising model and a hydrodynamic description, we show that droplets of particles moving in the direction opposite to that of…
Recent experimental evidence suggests that interactions in flocks of birds do not involve a characteristic length scale. Bird flocks have also been revealed to have an inhomogeneous density distribution, with the density of birds near the…
Interactions among neighboring birds in a flock cause an alignment of their flight directions. We show that the minimally structured (maximum entropy) model consistent with these local correlations correctly predicts the propagation of…
Background: Recent research in animal behaviour has contributed to determine how alignment, turning responses, and changes of speed mediate flocking and schooling interactions in different animal species. Here, we address specifically the…
We present a quantitative continuum theory of ``flocking'': the collective coherent motion of large numbers of self-propelled organisms. Our model predicts the existence of an ``ordered phase'' of flocks, in which all members of the flock…
Using a minimal aggregation-based model, we address the efficient information transfer observed in natural flocks during collective turns. Specifically, we demonstrate that this feature can arise solely from the non-reciprocal nature of…