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Collective effects in traffic on bi-directional ant-trails

Alexander John·Andreas Schadschneider·Debashish Chowdhury·Katsuhiro Nishinari
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Abstract

Motivated by recent experimental work of Burd et al., we propose a model of bi-directional ant-traffic on pre-existing ant-trails. It captures in a simple way some of the generic collective features of movements of real ants on a trail. Analyzing this model, we demonstrate that there are crucial qualitative differences between vehicular- and ant-traffics. In particular, we predict some unusual features of the flow rate that can be tested experimentally. As in the uni-directional model a non-monotonic density-dependence of the average velocity can be observed in certain parameter regimes. As a consequence of the interaction between oppositely moving ants the flow rate can become approximately constant over some density interval.

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Alexander John, Andreas Schadschneider, Debashish Chowdhury, Katsuhiro Nishinari. 2004-09-17. Collective effects in traffic on bi-directional ant-trails. https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0409458

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