Adaptive dynamics of Ising spins in one dimension leveraging reinforcement learning

Abstract

A one-dimensional flocking model using active Ising spins is studied, where the system evolves through the reinforcement learning approach via defining state, action, and cost function for each spin. The orientation of spin with respect to its neighbouring spins defines its state. The state of spin is updated by altering its spin orientation in accordance with the ϵ-greedy algorithm (action) and selecting a finite step from a uniform distribution to update position. The ϵ parameter is analogous to the thermal noise in the system. The cost function addresses cohesion among the spins. By exploring the system in the plane of the self-propulsion speed and ϵ parameter, four distinct states are found: disorder, flocking, flipping, and oscillatory. In the flipping state, a condensed flock reverses its direction of motion stochastically. The mean reversal time 〈T〉 exponentially decays with ϵ. A new state, an oscillatory state, is also found, a stochastic chaos state with a positive Lyapunov exponent. The findings obtained from the reinforcement learning approach for the active Ising model system exhibit similarities with the outcomes of other conventional techniques, even without defining any explicit interaction among the spins. © 2025 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies, are reserved.