Phase coexistence in the fully heterogeneous Hegselmann-Krause opinion dynamics model.

We present an extensive study of the joint effects of heterogeneous social agents and their heterogeneous social links in a bounded confidence opinion dynamics model. The full phase diagram of the model is explored for two different network's topologies and compared to two opposed extreme cases: on one hand, the heterogeneous agents constitute a mixed population and on the other, their interactions are modeled by a lattice. The results show that when agents prone to compromise coexist with close-minded ones, the steady state of the dynamics shows coexistent phases. In particular, unlike the case of homogeneous agents in networks, or heterogeneous agents in a fully mixed population, it is possible that the society ends up in consensus around one extreme opinion. Moreover, during the dynamics, the consensus may be overturned from one extreme to the other of the opinion space. We also show that the standard order parameter, the normalized average size of the largest opinion cluster, may be misleading in this case, as it hides the existence of these phases. The phase where the opinion of the society is overturned does not require the presence of agents with special characteristics, (stubborn, extremists, etc.); it results from the interplay of agents which have agreed on an extreme opinion with the remaining group that holds the opposite one. Among the former, some may be prone to compromise with other agents which are out of the majority group, these agents, according to their location in the network, may act like bridges between the two groups and slowly attract the whole society to the other extreme.

The consequences of hesitation: Axelrod model with intrinsic noise.

We study the influence of hesitating agents in the Axelrod model by introducing an intrinsic noise, which is proportional to the disagreement between the interacting agents, and thus coupled to the dynamics. Our results show that, unlike the effect of the cultural drift where the noise is just controlled by an external parameter, the intrinsic noise never allows the system to reach a frozen state in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, we show that when the intrinsic noise affects the agents' variables, the system's behaviour is also different from the case when it affects the network of their interactions.

Uplift of an elastic membrane by a viscous flow.

The uplift of an initially flat elastic membrane by an upward viscous flow is investigated experimentally. The deformed shape of the membrane results from a balance between the flow pressure, the elastic response of the membrane, and the fluid weight. This last effect becomes non-negligible for a large enough deformed area. The usual theoretical approach supposes the presence of a prewetting film regularizing the viscous stresses according to Lister et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 154501 (2013)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.111.154501]. Nevertheless, in our experiments without prewetting films, the measurements are correctly described with this theory in the elastic regime. Microscale roughness of membranes could introduce an equivalent characteristic scale in the problem. An alternative explanation could be provided by the appearance of a fluid lag filled with gas, for which a new theoretical framework has been recently proposed by Ball and Neufeld [Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 074101 (2018)2469-990X10.1103/PhysRevFluids.3.074101]. We compare the two approaches and find that both describe reasonably our experiments. However, consistency tests of both models show that the prewetting film model is more appropriate to describe our experimental data.