@inproceedings{0baebe8558c94c44826ef7e883596784,
title = "Brief Announcement: Foraging in Particle Systems via Self-Induced Phase Changes",
abstract = "The foraging problem asks how a collective of particles with limited computational, communication and movement capabilities can autonomously compress around a food source and disperse when the food is depleted or shifted, which may occur at arbitrary times. We would like the particles to iteratively self-organize, using only local interactions, to correctly gather whenever a food particle remains in a position long enough and search if no food particle has existed recently. Unlike previous approaches, these search and gather phases should be self-induced so as to be indefinitely repeatable as the food evolves, with microscopic changes to the food triggering macroscopic, system-wide phase transitions. We present a stochastic foraging algorithm based on a phase change in the fixed magnetization Ising model from statistical physics: Our algorithm is the first to leverage self-induced phase changes as an algorithmic tool. A key component of our algorithm is a careful token passing mechanism ensuring a dispersion broadcast wave will always outpace a compression wave.",
keywords = "Foraging, compression, phase changes, self-organized particle systems",
author = "Shunhao Oh and Dana Randall and Richa, {Andr{\'e}a W.}",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Shunhao Oh, Dana Randall, and Andr{\'e}a W. Richa.; 36th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2022 ; Conference date: 25-10-2022 Through 27-10-2022",
year = "2022",
month = oct,
day = "1",
doi = "10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2022.51",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs",
publisher = "Schloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing",
editor = "Christian Scheideler",
booktitle = "36th International Symposium on Distributed Computing, DISC 2022",
}