A nonequilibrium statistical field theory of swarms and other spatially extended complex systems

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonequilibrium statistical field theory to analyze how internal fluctuations influence the phase behavior of spatially extended complex systems like swarms, highlighting the importance of fluctuations in organization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel nonequilibrium field theoretical framework that explicitly incorporates internal fluctuations to better understand phase transitions in complex systems.

Findings

Internal fluctuations cause a renormalized decrease in temperature near symmetry breaking.

The models can be applied to understand ant swarm behavior.

Fluctuations are essential for accurate phase structure analysis.

Abstract

A class of models with applications to swarm behavior as well as many other types of spatially extended complex biological and physical systems is studied. Internal fluctuations can play an active role in the organization of the phase structure of such systems. Consequently, it is not possible to fully understand the behavior of these systems without explicitly incorporating the fluctuations. In particular, for the class of models studied here the effect of internal fluctuations due to finite size is a renormalized decrease in the temperature near the point of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We briefly outline how these models can be applied to the behavior of an ant swarm.