Speaker
Dr
Astrid de Wijn
(Stockholm University)
Description
Dynamic arrest is a general phenomenon across a wide range
of dynamic systems including glasses, traffic flow, and
dynamics in cells, but the universality of dynamic arrest
phenomena remains unclear. We connect the emergence of
traffic jams in a simple traffic flow model directly to the
dynamic slowing down in kinetically constrained models for
glasses. In kinetically constrained models, the formation of
glass becomes a true (singular) phase transition in the limit
$T\rightarrow 0$. Similarly, using the Nagel-Schreckenberg
model to simulate traffic flow, we show that the emergence
of jammed traffic acquires the signature of a sharp
transition in the deterministic limit $p\rightarrow 1$,
corresponding to overcautious driving. We identify a true
dynamic critical
point marking the onset of coexistence between free flowing
and jammed traffic, and demonstrate its analogy to the
kinetically constrained glass models. We find diverging
correlations analogous to those at a critical point of
thermodynamic phase transitions.
