Information conduction and convection in noiseless Vicsek flocks

Abstract

Physical interactions generally respect certain symmetries, such as reciprocity and energy conservation, which survive in coarse grained isothermal descriptions. Active many-body systems usually break such symmetries intrinsically, on the particle level, so that their collective behavior is often more naturally interpreted as a result of information exchange. Here, we study numerically how information spreads from a "leader" particle through an initially aligned flock, described by the Vicsek model without noise. In the low-speed limit of a static spin lattice, we find purely conductive spreading, reminiscent of heat transfer. Swarm motility and heterogeneity can break reciprocity and spin conservation. But what seems more consequential for the swarm response is that the dispersion relation acquires a significant convective contribution along the leader's direction of motion.