Effect of Individual Properties of Flexible Chainlike Walkers in a Many- Body System

Several versions of the “flexible chainlike walker” (FCW) model are proposed and investigated by numerical simulations on a square lattice. It is shown that the “original” FCWs aggregate spontaneously and irreversibly, where no adherence is assumed, triggered by “mutual locking”. This is in complete contrast to established aggregation models which necessarily require adherence, and exemplifies the significance of the deformability of self-driven objects. The behaviors of the “smart” FCWs, which have higher ability of moving, are similar to those of the original FCWs. This suggests that the spontaneous, irreversible aggregation is a robust feature peculiar to a many-body system of deformable self-driven objects. On the other hand, the “double-headed” FCWs do not undergo the mutual locking and the resultant irreversible aggregation, unlike the original and the smart FCWs. This indicates that “bidirectionality” prevents deformable self-driven objects from aggregating.