prof. Helmut Satz, Univ. Bielefeld

Novel critical behaviour: the statistical mechanics of bird swarms

In the past twenty years, a new field of statistical physics has emerged, the study of the self-organized behaviour of animal swarms. It was started in 1995 by a seminal paper of T. Vicsek and collaborators in Budapest and has since then been considerably extended. In 2008, extensive empirical data on starling flocks were provided by the STARFLAG project, carried out at the University of Rome, with G. Parisi as coordinator. These data were well accounted for by extended versions of Vicsek model, which is based on a generalized sin system, with local nearest neighbour interactions leading to spontaneous symmetry breaking and collective global behaviour.