title: Angle restriction enhances synchronization of self-propelled objects.
abstract: Understanding the synchronization process of self-propelled objects is of great interest in science and technology. We propose a synchronization model for a self-propelled objects system in which we restrict the maximal angle change of each object to θ(R). At each time step, each object moves and changes its direction according to the average direction of all of its neighbors (including itself). If the angle change is greater than a cutoff angle θ(R), the change is replaced by θ(R). We find that (i) counterintuitively, the synchronization improves significantly when θ(R) decreases, (ii) there exists a critical restricted angle θ(Rc) at which the synchronization order parameter changes from a large value to a small value, and (iii) for each noise amplitude η, the synchronization as a function of θ(R) shows a maximum value, indicating the existence of an optimal θ(R) that yields the best synchronization for every η.
authors.affiliation: Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai 200240, PR China.
authors.forename: Jianxi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Shlomo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Havlin
authors.forename: Xiaoming
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: H Eugene
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Stanley