Berlin 2005 – scientific programme
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AKSOE: Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
AKSOE 5: Traffic Dynamics, Urban and Regional Systems I
AKSOE 5.4: Talk
Saturday, March 5, 2005, 12:00–12:30, TU P-N203
Collective effects in traffic on bi-directional ant-trails — •Alexander John1, Andreas Schadschneider1, Debashish Chowdhury2, and Katsuhiro Nishinari3 — 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, Universitaet zu Koeln, D- 50937 Koeln, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India — 3Department of Applied Mathematics and Informatics, Ryukoku University, Shiga 520-2194, Japan
Motivated by recent experimental work [Burd et al.], we propose models of single- and bidirectional traffic on ant-trails. Although these models are formulated in the simple language of cellular automata, they capture the main features of the dynamics of ants moving on a trail. Crucial differences like altruism vs. egoism between traffic on ant-trails and human vehicular traffic are discussed. In addition, predictions from both models can be tested experimentally. The main feature of the single-lane model is a non-monotonicity of velocity vs. density. Our bidirectional model shows a constant flux over an intermediate density regime. Many properties of the dynamics can be understood by the formation of clusters and coarsening processes.