Mathematician's study of 'swarmalators' could direct future science | EurekAlert! Science News: Strogatz and Kevin O'Keeffe, Ph.D. '17, used the curious mating ritual of male Japanese tree frogs as inspiration for their exploration of "swarmalators" - their term for systems in which both synchronization and swarming occur together.
Specifically, they considered oscillators whose phase dynamics and spatial dynamics are coupled. In the instance of the male tree frogs, they attempt to croak in exact anti-phase (one croaks while the other is silent) while moving away from a rival so as to be heard by females.
This opens up "a new class of math problems," said Strogatz, a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow. "The question is, what do we expect to see when people start building systems like this or observing them in biology?"
Their paper, "Oscillators That Sync and Swarm," was published Nov. 13 in Nature Communications. Strogatz and O'Keeffe - now a postdoctoral researcher with the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - collaborated with Hyunsuk Hong from Chonbuk National University in Jeonju, South Korea.
Specifically, they considered oscillators whose phase dynamics and spatial dynamics are coupled. In the instance of the male tree frogs, they attempt to croak in exact anti-phase (one croaks while the other is silent) while moving away from a rival so as to be heard by females.
This opens up "a new class of math problems," said Strogatz, a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow. "The question is, what do we expect to see when people start building systems like this or observing them in biology?"
Their paper, "Oscillators That Sync and Swarm," was published Nov. 13 in Nature Communications. Strogatz and O'Keeffe - now a postdoctoral researcher with the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - collaborated with Hyunsuk Hong from Chonbuk National University in Jeonju, South Korea.