Exotic swarming dynamics of high-dimensional swarmalators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-dimensional swarmalator model that captures complex self-organizing behaviors across various real-world systems, demonstrating its versatility through multiple biological and physical examples.

Contribution

A generalized D-dimensional swarmalator model is proposed, extending previous models to better represent diverse collective behaviors in multiple disciplines.

Findings

Successfully models fish schooling and gene expression waves

Captures embryonic cell sorting and microrobot collectives

Demonstrates intrinsic self-organizations for various interactions

Abstract

Swarmalators are oscillators that can swarm as well as sync via a dynamic balance between their spatial proximity and phase similarity. We present a generalized D-dimensional swarmalator model, which is more realistic and versatile, that captures the self-organizing behaviors of a plethora of real-world collectives. This allows for modeling complicated processes such as flocking, schooling of fish, cell sorting during embryonic development, residential segregation, and opinion dynamics in social groups. We demonstrate its versatility by capturing the manoeuvers of the school of fish and traveling waves of gene expression, both qualitatively and quantitatively, embryonic cell sorting, microrobot collectives, and various life stages of slime mold by a suitable extension of the original model to incorporate appropriate features besides a gallery of its intrinsic self-organizations for various interactions. We expect this high-dimensional model to be potentially useful in describing swarming systems in a wide range of disciplines including physics of active matter, developmental biology, sociology, and engineering.