Contagion shocks in one dimension (Q2342071)

The authors consider a system of interacting agents that move in one dimension according to the intensity of some emotion that spreads and equilibrates through the agents, and study the dynamics of this system at three different levels: microscopic, macroscopic, and kinetic. They provide a thorough description of the behavior of the system at the microscopic level in terms of the relation between the difference in emotion intensity between two consecutive agents \(\triangle q\) and the quantity \(C =\gamma R\) that characterizes how fast agents equilibrate in relation to the characteristic length at which the interaction happens. In the regime when \(y\to \infty\) and \(R \to 0\) three different behaviors are observed; for \(\triangle q <2C\) the classical sticky particle model is recovered; for \(2C< \triangle q <4C\) particles will initially cross but eventually converge on the trajectory of the shock such that new incoming particles will not cross the shock but adhere to it; and for \(\triangle q>4C\) particles oscillate indefinitely through the shock. At the macroscopic level, the authors first recover the continuum version of the sticky particle model and provide a formula for the asymptotic speed of the shock. Then they use the Eulerian formulation to derive a continuum equation with the same dynamics as the particle system when the equilibration rate is finite and the characteristic interaction length is strictly positive. The kinetic equation is formally derived, and provides a continuous description of the particle model when the characteristics of the PDE cross, so that the PDE model does not capture the dynamics of the particle system accurately. A numerical example is given, with the kinetic description, which again recovers the behavior observed at the microscopic level.