Some aspects of the inertial spin model for flocks and related kinetic equations

Abstract

In this paper, we study the macroscopic behavior of the inertial spin (IS) model. This model has been recently proposed to describe the collective dynamics of flocks of birds, and its main feature is the presence of an auxiliary dynamical variable, a sort of internal spin, which conveys the interaction among the birds with the effect of better describing the turning of flocks. After discussing the geometrical and mechanical properties of the IS model, we show that, in the case of constant interaction among the birds, its mean-field limit is described by a nonlinear Fokker–Planck equation, whose equilibria are fully characterized. Finally, in the case of non-constant interactions, we derive the kinetic equation for the mean-field limit of the model in the absence of thermal noise, and explore its macroscopic behavior by analyzing the mono-kinetic solutions.