Flocking with Multiple Types: Competition, Fluid Limits and Traveling Waves

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a two-type interacting particle system with non-local interactions, proving a law of large numbers, studying traveling wave solutions, and providing phase-plane analysis for long-term behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a nonlinear, discontinuous McKean-Vlasov framework for multi-type flocking, establishing convergence, traveling waves, and phase-plane analysis for long-term dynamics.

Findings

Proved convergence of empirical measures to a deterministic limit.

Identified traveling wave solutions and their properties.

Derived tail asymptotics and wave speeds for specific regimes.

Abstract

We study a class of interacting particle systems on $\mathbb{R}$ with two types. Particles evolve by independent jumps sampled from a fixed distribution, with type-dependent jump rates $v_+$, $v_-$ and stochastic type switching driven by non-local order-based interactions. The switching rates depend on the empirical distribution through the proportion of opposite-type particles located ahead, leading to a nonlinear and discontinuous dependence on the empirical measure outside the standard Lipschitz McKean-Vlasov framework. Our first main result is a law of large numbers for the empirical measure process: we prove convergence, along subsequences, to a deterministic measure-valued process characterized by a McKean-Vlasov equation. The proof combines tightness in Wasserstein space with a martingale characterization of limit points. A uniqueness argument based on a Kolmogorov-Smirnov-type distance adapted to the ordering structure yields convergence of the full empirical measure sequence and, in turn, propagation of chaos on finite time intervals. We then study the long-time behavior of the limiting dynamics. Because the system has persistent drift, invariant distributions do not arise; instead, we analyze traveling waves, corresponding to stationary profiles in a moving frame. For exponential jump distributions, the associated non-local integro-differential system admits a local description. In the regime $v_+>v_-=0$, this further reduces to a coupled system of non-linear ODEs, allowing a phase-plane analysis that yields a traveling wave as a heteroclinic orbit connecting two equilibria. We also identify the wave speed and mass partition, and derive tail asymptotics by spectral analysis of the linearized system.