Bond disorder enhances the information transfer in the polar flock

Abstract

Collections of self-propelled particles (SPPs) exhibit coherent motion and show true long-range order in two-dimensions. Inhomogeneity, in general, destroys the usual long-range order of the polar SPPs. We model a system of polar SPPs with inhomogeneous interaction strength or bond disorder. The system is studied near the order-to-disorder transition for different strengths of the disorder. Our numerical simulation indicates that the nature of the phase transition changes from discontinuous to continuous type by tuning the strength of the disorder. The bond disorder also enhances the ordering near the transition due to the formation of a homogeneous flock state for the large disorder. It leads to faster information transfer in the system and enhances the systems’ information entropy. Our study gives a new understanding of the effect of intrinsic inhomogeneity in the self-propelled particle system. © 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA Medialab srl.