Speaker
Arianna Bottinelli
(Nordita)
Description
When people gather in large groups like those found at Black
Friday sales events, pilgrimages, heavy metal concerts, and
parades, crowd density often becomes exceptionally high. In
these situations, social norms and global coordination
happen sometimes to break down, giving rise to unusual and
occasionally tragic collective motions known as “crowd
turbulence”. While active particle simulations can reproduce
most phenomenology of human collective motion, the
mechanisms underlying the emergence of such collective
motions from purely physical interactions between contacting
bodies are poorly understood.
Here, we take inspiration from techniques developed in the
context of jammed granular materials to study an active
matter model inspired by situations when large groups of
people gather at a point of common interest. Our analysis
identifies Goldstone modes, soft spots, and stochastic
resonance as structurally-driven mechanisms for potentially
dangerous emergent collective motions.
