While it is impossible to predict a behaviour of a person or an animal using only basic physics laws, motion of a large crowd or a flock can be predicted quite accurately. Large scales make details and motives of individual behaviour unimportant, while the symmetry of motion and interactions starts playing the central role. We study the mechanisms of dynamic self-organisation in systems of active agents using various models of collective behaviour and apply methods of non-equilibrium statistical physics and condensed matter physics to studying opinion dynamics or flocking.
Representative publications:
1. Flocking
- (opens in a new window)Tricritical points in a Vicsek model of self-propelled particles with bounded confidence
M Romensky, V Lobaskin, and T Ihle Phys. Rev. E 90, 063315 (2014)
2. Cell motility
- (opens in a new window)Contact inhibition of locomotion and mechanical cross-talk between cell–cell and cell–substrate adhesion determine the pattern of junctional tension in epithelial cell aggregates. L Coburn, H Lopez, BJ Caldwell, E Moussa, C Yap, R Priya, A Noppe, et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell 27 (22), 3436-3448 (2016)
3. Opinion dynamics
- (opens in a new window)Polarized Ukraine 2014: Opinion and territorial split demonstrated with the bounded confidence XY model, parametrized by Twitter data. M Romenskyy, V Spaiser, T Ihle, V Lobaskin, Royal Society open science 5 (8), 171935 (2018)