COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR OF INTERACTING PARTICLES: RADIUS-DEPENDENT PHASE TRANSITION

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study and discuss the effect of three zones (repulsion zone, orientation zone and attraction zone) on the phase transition in 2D-collective moving particles. Our main motivation is to better understand the complex behavior of non-equilibrium multi-agent system by extending the earlier and original model proposed by Viscek et al. [T. Viscek et al., Phys. Rev. Lett.75 (1995) 1226] for one zone. The analysis is performed over different situations by using a numerical simulation method. It is found that the radius R2 of orientation zone plays an important role in the system. In effect, by varying the parameter R2 a phase transition can be achieved from disordered moving of individuals to a group to highly aligned collective motion. The results also show that, the critical value of R2 at which the transition emerges depends strongly on the size of the repulsion zone but not on the size of attraction one.