Topological states and continuum model for swarmalators without force reciprocity

TL;DR

This paper develops a hydrodynamic model for swarmalators with non-reciprocal forces, revealing explicit traveling wave solutions with complex topological properties and analyzing their stability and pattern formation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel continuum model for swarmalators without force reciprocity and characterizes explicit topological traveling wave solutions.

Findings

Explicit doubly-periodic traveling wave solutions with non-trivial topology.

Stability conditions based on hyperbolicity analysis.

Numerical simulations confirm model validity and pattern emergence.

Abstract

Swarmalators are systems of agents which are both self-propelled particles and oscillators. Each particle is endowed with a phase which modulates its interaction force with the other particles. In return, relative positions modulate phase synchronization between interacting particles. In the present model, there is no force reciprocity: when a particle attracts another one, the latter repels the former. This results in a pursuit behavior. In this paper, we derive a hydrodynamic model of this swarmalator system and show that it has explicit doubly-periodic travelling-wave solutions in two space dimensions. These special solutions enjoy non-trivial topology quantified by the index of the phase vector along a period in either dimension. Stability of these solutions is studied by investigating the conditions for hyperbolicity of the model. Numerical solutions of both the particle and hydrodynamic models are shown. They confirm the consistency of the hydrodynamic model with the particle one for small times or large phase-noise but also reveal the emergence of intriguing patterns in the case of small phase-noise.