Evidence of a robust universality class in the critical behavior of self-propelled agents: metric versus topological interactions.

The nature of the interactions among self-propelled agents (SPA), i.e., topological versus metric or a combination of both types, is a relevant open question in the field of self-organization phenomena. We studied the critical behavior of a Vicsek-like system of SPA given by a group of agents moving at constant speed and interacting among themselves under the action of a topological rule: each agent aligns itself with the average direction of its seven nearest neighbors, independent of the distance, under the influence of some noise. Based on both stationary and dynamic measurements, we provide strong evidence that both types of interactions are manifestations of the same phenomenon, which defines a robust universality class. Also, the cluster size distribution evaluated at the critical point shows a power-law behavior, and the exponent corresponding to the topological model is in excellent agreement with that of the metric one, further reinforcing our claim. Furthermore, we found that with topological interactions the average distance of influence between agents undergoes large fluctuations that diverge at the critical noise, thus providing clues about a mechanism that could be implemented by the agents to change their moving strategy.