Spontaneous emergence of counterclockwise vortex motion in assemblies of pedestrians roaming within an enclosure
The emergence of coherent vortices has been observed in a wide variety of many-body systems such as animal flocks, bacteria, colloids, vibrated granular materials or human crowds. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that pedestrians roaming within an enclosure also form vortex-like patterns which, i...
| Authors: | ; ; ; ; |
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| Format: | Article |
| Publication date: | 2022 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad de Navarra |
| Repository: | Dadun. Depósito Académico Digital de la Universidad de Navarra |
| Language: | English |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:dadun.unav.edu:10171/63330 |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10171/63330 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Counterclockwise rotation Coherent vortices Pedestrians Enclosure |
| Summary: | The emergence of coherent vortices has been observed in a wide variety of many-body systems such as animal flocks, bacteria, colloids, vibrated granular materials or human crowds. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that pedestrians roaming within an enclosure also form vortex-like patterns which, intriguingly, only rotate counterclockwise. By implementing simple numerical simulations, we evidence that the development of swirls in many-particle systems can be described as a phase transition in which both the density of agents and their dissipative interactions with the boundaries play a determinant role. Also, for the specific case of pedestrians, we show that the preference of right-handed people (the majority in our experiments) to turn leftwards when facing a wall is the symmetry breaking mechanism needed to trigger the global counterclockwise rotation observed. |
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