Prof. Irene Giardina

Title:

From individual motion to group behavior: what regulates collective dynamics in natural swarms of insects

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Abstract:

Experiments on swarms of insects show that these groups obey robust statistical laws, thereby supporting a physics-based approach. I will discuss how three crucial ingredients must be incorporated in their theoretical description: activity, behavioral inertia, and mutual alignment. I will first consider small sparse groups, where interactions play no role, and show how to extract from experimental data information on the order of the dynamics. Then I will consider larger and denser groups, where interactions are strong and correlations are long-range. I will show how conservation laws, interactions and motility combine together leading to non-trivial dynamics and out-of-equilibrium features on the large scale. Our analysis explains the mechanistic origin of efficient collective behaviour in living groups and unveils new challenges in the statistical physics of active systems.