From flocking to jamming in collective cell dynamics: a Vicsek-like model including contact forces
This work addresses the understanding of complex collective cell dynamics and tissue flows, representing an incremental improvement by integrating existing methods.
The authors tackled the problem of modeling collective cell dynamics by proposing an agent-based model that combines Vicsek-like polarity alignments with contact forces, achieving recovery of order-disorder phase transitions and jamming effects in high-density regimes.
The goal of the present work is to propose an agent-based model that originally combines classical Vicsek-like polarity alignments and contact forces, as implemented in the framework developed by Maury and Venel in [Maury, Venel, 2011]. The description additionally incorporates velocity feedback on polarity and soft attraction-repulsion interactions. After carefully studying the well posedness of the model, we introduce a suitable discretization and perform an extensive range of numerical experiments to assess the impact of different modeling ingredients. The dynamical system is capable of recovering the order-disorder phase transition of the flock, as well as the jamming effect in high density regimes. As such, the developed framework can be seen as a promising theoretical tool that could contribute to improving the understanding of complex collective cell dynamics and emerging tissue flows.