Phase transitions and macroscopic limits in a BGK model of body-attitude coordination

In this article we investigate the phase transition phenomena that occur in a model of self-organisation through body-attitude coordination. Here, the body attitude of an agent is modelled by a rotation matrix in R3 as in Degond et al. (Math Models Methods Appl Sci 27(6):1005–1049, 2017). The starting point of this study is a BGK equation modelling the evolution of the distribution function of the system at a kinetic level. The main novelty of this work is to show that in the spatially homogeneous case, self-organisation may appear or not depending on the local density of agents involved. We first exhibit a connection between body-orientation models and models of nematic alignment of polymers in higher-dimensional space from which we deduce the complete description of the possible equilibria. Then, thanks to a gradient-flow structure specific to this BGK model, we are able to prove the stability and the convergence towards the equilibria in the different regimes. We then derive the macroscopic models associated with the stable equilibria in the spirit of Degond et al. (Arch Ration Mech Anal 216(1):63–115, 2015, Math Models Methods Appl Sci 27(6):1005–1049, 2017)

Macroscopic limits and phase transition in a system of self-propelled particles

We investigate systems of self-propelled particles with alignment interaction. Compared to previous work, the force acting on the particles is not normalized and this modification gives rise to phase transitions from disordered states at low density to aligned states at high densities. This model is the space inhomogeneous extension of a previous work by Frouvelle and Liu in which the existence and stability of the equilibrium states were investigated. When the density is lower than a threshold value, the dynamics is described by a non-linear diffusion equation. By contrast, when the density is larger than this threshold value, the dynamics is described by a hydrodynamic model for self-alignment interactions previously derived in Degond and Motsch. However, the modified normalization of the force gives rise to different convection speeds and the resulting model may lose its hyperbolicity in some regions of the state space

Phase transitions, hysteresis, and hyperbolicity for self-organized alignment dynamics

International audienceWe provide a complete and rigorous description of phase transitions for kinetic models of self-propelled particles interacting through alignment. These models exhibit a competition between alignment and noise. Both the alignment frequency and noise intensity depend on a measure of the local alignment. We show that, in the spatially homogeneous case, the phase transition features (number and nature of equilibria, stability, convergence rate, phase diagram, hysteresis) are totally encoded in how the ratio between the alignment and noise intensities depend on the local alignment. In the spatially inhomogeneous case, we derive the macroscopic models associated to the stable equilibria and classify their hyperbolicity according to the same function

Kinetic formulation and global existence for the Hall-Magneto-hydrodynamics system

This paper deals with the derivation and analysis of the the Hall Magneto-Hydrodynamic equations. We first provide a derivation of this system from a two-fluids Euler-Maxwell system for electrons and ions, through a set of scaling limits. We also propose a kinetic formulation for the Hall-MHD equations which contains as fluid closure different variants of the Hall-MHD model. Then, we prove the existence of global weak solutions for the incompressible viscous resistive Hall-MHD model. We use the particular structure of the Hall term which has zero contribution to the energy identity. Finally, we discuss particular solutions in the form of axisymmetric purely swirling magnetic fields and propose some regularization of the Hall equation

Macroscopic limit of a Fokker-Planck model of swarming rigid bodies

International audienceWe consider self-propelled rigid-bodies interacting through local body-attitude alignment modelled by stochastic differential equations. We derive a hydrodynamic model of this system at large spatio-temporal scales and particle numbers in any dimension n ≥ 3. This goal was already achieved in dimension n = 3, or in any dimension n ≥ 3 for a different system involving jump processes. However, the present work corresponds to huge conceptual and technical gaps compared with earlier ones. The key difficulty is to determine an auxiliary but essential object, the generalized collision invariant. We achieve this aim by using the geometrical structure of the rotation group, namely, its maximal torus, Cartan subalgebra and Weyl group as well as other concepts of representation theory and Weyl's integration formula. The resulting hydrodynamic model appears as a hyperbolic system whose coefficients depend on the generalized collision invariant

Macroscopic limit of a Fokker-Planck model of swarming rigid bodies

International audienceWe consider self-propelled rigid-bodies interacting through local body-attitude alignment modelled by stochastic differential equations. We derive a hydrodynamic model of this system at large spatio-temporal scales and particle numbers in any dimension n ≥ 3. This goal was already achieved in dimension n = 3, or in any dimension n ≥ 3 for a different system involving jump processes. However, the present work corresponds to huge conceptual and technical gaps compared with earlier ones. The key difficulty is to determine an auxiliary but essential object, the generalized collision invariant. We achieve this aim by using the geometrical structure of the rotation group, namely, its maximal torus, Cartan subalgebra and Weyl group as well as other concepts of representation theory and Weyl's integration formula. The resulting hydrodynamic model appears as a hyperbolic system whose coefficients depend on the generalized collision invariant

Body-attitude coordination in arbitrary dimension

We consider a system of self-propelled agents interacting through body attitude coordination in arbitrary dimension n ≥ 3. We derive the formal kinetic and hydrodynamic limits for this model. Previous literature was restricted to dimension n = 3 only and relied on parametrizations of the rotation group that are only valid in dimension 3. To extend the result to arbitrary dimensions n ≥ 3, we develop a different strategy based on Lie group representations and the Weyl integration formula. These results open the way to the study of the resulting hydrodynamic model (the "Self-Organized Hydrodynamics for Body orientation (SOHB)") in arbitrary dimensions