Contrarian compulsions produce exotic time-dependent flocking of active particles

Abstract

Animals having a tendency to align their velocities to an average of those of their neighbors may flock as illustrated by the Vicsek model and its variants. If, in addition, they feel a systematic contrarian trend, the result may be a time periodic adjustment of the flock or period doubling in time. These exotic phases are predicted from kinetic theory and numerically found in a modified two-dimensional Vicsek model of self-propelled particles. Numerical simulations demonstrate striking effects of alignment noise on the polarization order parameter measuring particle flocking: maximum polarization length is achieved at an optimal nonzero noise level. When contrarian compulsions are more likely than conformist ones, nonuniform polarized phases appear as the noise surpasses threshold.