Flocking through disorder
Orateur : Denis Bartolot
Laboratoire de Physique de l’ENS de Lyon
Abstract : How do flocks, herds and swarms proceed through disordered environments ? This question is not only crucial to the displacement of animal groups in the wild, but also to virtually all applications of collective robotics, and active materials composed of motile units. In stark contrast, appart from very rare exceptions, our physical understanding of flocking motion has been hitherto restrained to homogeneous media.
Combining measurements on colloidal bots flocking through random lattices and theory, we attempt elucidating how collective motion survives to geometrical disorder
Firstly we show that the bending elasticity of emergent flocks restrains their spontaneous flows to sparse channel networks. Secondly, we demonstrate how further increasing disorder, collective motion is suppressed in the form of a first-order phase transition generic to all polar active materials.
Date et lieu : le Vendredi 9 Juin 2017 à 11h00, salle de séminaire IRPHE