Numerical models indicate that collective animal behavior may emerge from simple local rules of interaction among the individuals. However, very little is known about the nature of such interaction, so that models and theories mostly rely on aprioristic assumptions. By reconstructing the three-dimensional positions of individual birds in airborne flocks of a few thousand members, we show that the interaction does not depend on the metric distance, as most current models and theories assume, but rather on the topological distance. In fact, we discovered that each bird interacts on average with a fixed number of neighbors (six to seven), rather than with all neighbors within a fixed metric distance. We argue that a topological interaction is indispensable to maintain a flock's cohesion against the large density changes caused by external perturbations, typically predation. We support this hypothesis by numerical simulations, showing that a topological interaction grants significantly higher cohesion of the aggregation compared with a standard metric one.

From bird flocks to fish schools, animal groups often seem to react to environmental perturbations as if of one mind. Most studies in collective animal behavior have aimed to understand how a globally ordered state may emerge from simple behavioral rules. Less effort has been devoted to understanding the origin of collective response, namely the way the group as a whole reacts to its environment. Yet, in the presence of strong predatory pressure on the group, collective response may yield a significant adaptive advantage. Here we suggest that collective response in animal groups may be achieved through scale-free behavioral correlations. By reconstructing the 3D position and velocity of individual birds in large flocks of starlings, we measured to what extent the velocity fluctuations of different birds are correlated to each other. We found that the range of such spatial correlation does not have a constant value, but it scales with the linear size of the flock. This result indicates that behavioral correlations are scale free: The change in the behavioral state of one animal affects and is affected by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how large the group is. Scale-free correlations provide each animal with an effective perception range much larger than the direct interindividual interaction range, thus enhancing global response to perturbations. Our results suggest that flocks behave as critical systems, poised to respond maximally to environmental perturbations.

Hard spheres are ubiquitous in condensed matter: they have been used as models for liquids, crystals, colloidal systems, granular systems, and powders. Packings of hard spheres are of even wider interest as they are related to important problems in information theory, such as digitalization of signals, error correcting codes, and optimization problems. In three dimensions the densest packing of identical hard spheres has been proven to be the fcc lattice, and it is conjectured that the closest packing is ordered (a regular lattice, e.g., a crystal) in low enough dimension. Still, amorphous packings have attracted much interest because for polydisperse colloids and granular materials the crystalline state is not obtained in experiments for kinetic reasons. A theory of amorphous packings, and more generally glassy states, of hard spheres is reviewed here, that is based on the replica method: this theory gives predictions on the structure and thermodynamics of these states. In dimensions between two and six these predictions can be successfully compared with numerical simulations. The limit of large dimension is also discussed where an exact solution is possible. Some of the results presented here were published, but others are original: in particular, an improved discussion of the large dimension limit and new results on the correlation function and the contact force distribution in three dimensions. The main assumptions that are beyond the theory presented are clarified and, in particular, the relation between static computation and the dynamical procedures used to construct amorphous packings. There remain many weak points in the theory that should be better investigated.

Despite decades of work, gaining a first-principles understanding of amorphous materials remains an extremely challenging problem. However, recent theoretical breakthroughs have led to the formulation of an exact solution of a microscopic glass-forming model in the mean-field limit of infinite spatial dimension. Numerical simulations have remarkably confirmed the dimensional robustness of some of the predictions. This review describes these latest advances. More specifically, we consider the dynamical and thermodynamic descriptions of hard spheres around the dynamical, Gardner, and jamming transitions. Comparing mean-field predictions with the finite-dimensional simulations, we identify robust aspects of the theory and uncover its more sensitive features. We conclude with a brief overview of ongoing research.

We propose a first principles computation of the equilibrium thermodynamics of simple fragile glasses starting from the two body interatomic potential. A replica formulation translates this problem into that of a gas of interacting molecules, each molecule being built of $m$ atoms, and having a gyration radius (related to the cage size) which vanishes at zero temperature. We use a small cage expansion, valid at low temperatures, which allows us to compute the cage size, the specific heat (which follows the Dulong and Petit law), and the configurational entropy.