Excitable Swarms
Excitable systems, such as spiking neurons, chemical oscillators, or wildfires, are non-equilibrium systems that normally reside in a quiescent state but can amplify fluctuations that exceed a threshold into an extreme excursion or ‘spike’. We are currently studying how interacting particles with excitable internal degrees of freedom self-organize and spontaneously carry out collective behaviors.
In this video, 2D agents are simulated in a periodic domain (boundaries indicated by the border). Agents communicate by ‘spiking’ (black=quiescent, copper=excited). These agents are also self-propelled, and when their propulsion is coupled to their communication, they spontaneously form structures containing spiral defects of the communication field.