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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…
Two hallmarks of non-equilibrium systems, from active colloids to animal herds, are agents motility and nonreciprocal interactions. Their interplay creates feedback loops leading to complex spatiotemporal dynamics crucial to understand and…
Curvature plays a central role in the proper function of many biological processes. With active matter being a standard framework for understanding many aspects of the physics of life, it is natural to ask what effect curvature has on the…
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…
Large animal groups -- bird flocks, fish schools, insect swarms -- are often assumed to form by gradual aggregation of sparsely distributed individuals. Using a mathematically precise framework based on time-varying directed interaction…
Understanding collective self-organization in active matter, such as bird flocks and fish schools, remains a grand challenge in physics. Interactions that induce alignment are essential for flocking; however, alignment alone is generally…
How do flocks, herds and swarms proceed through disordered environments? This question is not only crucial to animal groups in the wild, but also to virtually all applications of collective robotics, and active materials composed of…
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…
The self-organised motion of vast numbers of creatures in a single direction is a spectacular example of emergent order. We recreate this phenomenon using actuated non-living components. We report here that millimetre-sized tapered rods,…
Experiments find coherent information transfer through biological groups on length and time scales distinctly below those on which asymptotically correct hydrodynamic theories apply. We present here a new continuum theory of collective…
The study of the movement of flocks, whether biological or technological is motivated by the desire to understand the capability of coherent motion of a large number of agents that only receive very limited information. In a biological…
A mathematical theory on flocking serves the foundation for several ubiquitous multi-agent phenomena in biology, ecology, sensor networks, economy, as well as social behavior like language emergence and evolution. Directly inspired by the…
From the formation of animal flocks to the emergence of coordinate motion in bacterial swarms, at all scales populations of motile organisms display coherent collective motion. This consistent behavior strongly contrasts with the difference…
In active matter systems, self-propelled particles can self-organize to undergo collective motion, leading to persistent dynamical behavior out of equilibrium. In cells, cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins self-organize into complex…
Active matter physics and swarm robotics have provided powerful tools for the study and control of ensembles driven by internal sources. At the macroscale, controlling swarms typically utilizes significant memory, processing power, and…
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…
We investigate the effect of cooperative interactions in an ensemble of microorganisms, modelled as self-propelled disk-like and rod-like particles, in a three-dimensional turbulent flow to show flocking as an emergent phenomenon. Building…
We present a hydrodynamic model of flocking that generalizes the familiar Toner-Tu equations to incorporate turning inertia of well-polarized flocks. The continuum equations controlled by only two dimensionless parameters, orientational…
The Vicsek simulation model of flocking together with its theoretical treatment by Toner and Tu in 1995 were two foundational cornerstones of active matter physics. However, despite the field's tremendous progress, the actual universality…
Inspired by motile cells in tissue formation, we find that active systems of self-aligning adhesive particles undergo ballistic aggregation through a flocking transition. This kinetic regime emerges when the cluster persistence length grows…