Order-disorder transition in repulsive self-propelled particle systems.

Abstract

We study the collective dynamics of repulsive self-propelled particles. The particles are governed by coupled equations of motion that include polar self-propulsion, damping of velocity and of polarity, repulsive particle-particle interaction, and deterministic dynamics. Particle dynamics simulations show that the collective coherent motion with large density fluctuations spontaneously emerges from a disordered, isotropic state. In the parameter region where the rotational damping of polarity is strong, the system undergoes an abrupt shift to the absorbing ordered state after a waiting period in the metastable disordered state. In order to obtain a simple understanding of the mechanism underlying the collective behavior, we analyze the binary particle scattering process. We show that this approach correctly predicts the order-disorder transition at a dilute limit. The same approach is expanded for finite densities, although it disagrees with the result from many-particle simulations due to many-body correlations and density fluctuations.