Breaking consensus in kinetic opinion formation models on graphons

B. Düring, J. Franceschi, M.-T. Wolfram, M. Zanella

Preprint arXiv, 2024

In this work we propose and investigate a strategy to prevent consensus in kinetic models for opinion formation. We consider a large interacting agent system, and assume that agent interactions are driven by compromise as well as self-thinking dynamics and also modulated by an underlying static social network.

This network structure is included using so-called graphons, which modulate the interaction frequency in the corresponding kinetic formulation. We then derive the corresponding limiting Fokker Planck equation, and analyze its large time behavior. This microscopic setting serves as a starting point for the proposed control strategy, which steers agents away from mean opinion and is characterised by a suitable penalization depending on the properties of the graphon. We show that this minimalist approach is very effective by analyzing the quasi-stationary solutions mean-field model in a plurality of graphon structures. Several numerical experiments are also provided the show the effectiveness of the approach in preventing the formation of consensus steering the system towards a declustered state.

Uncertainty Quantification for the Homogeneous Landau-Fokker-Planck Equation via Deterministic Particle Galerkin methods

R. Bailo, J. A. Carrillo, A. Medaglia, M. Zanella

Preprint arXiv, 2023.

We design a deterministic particle method for the solution of the spatially homogeneous Landau equation with uncertainty. The deterministic particle approximation is based on the reformulation of the Landau equation as a formal gradient flow on the set of probability measures, whereas the propagation of uncertain quantities is computed by means of a sG representation of each particle.

This approach guarantees spectral accuracy in uncertainty space while preserving the fundamental structural properties of the model: the positivity of the solution, the conservation of invariant quantities, and the entropy production. We provide a regularity results for the particle method in the random space. We perform the numerical validation of the particle method in a wealth of test cases.

Effects of heterogeneous opinion interactions in many-agent systems for epidemic dynamics

S. Bonandin, M. Zanella

Networks and Heterogeneous Media, in press. (Preprint arXiv)

In this work we define a kinetic model for understanding the impact of heterogeneous opinion formation dynamics on epidemics. The considered many-agent system is characterized by nonsymmetric interactions which define a coupled system of kinetic equations for the evolution of the opinion density in each compartment.

In the quasi-invariant limit we may show positivity and uniqueness of the solution of the problem together with its convergence towards an equilibrium distribution exhibiting bimodal shape. The tendency of the system towards opinion clusters is further analyzed by means of numerical methods, which confirm the consistency of the kinetic model with its moment system whose evolution is approximated in several regimes of parameters.

Kinetic compartmental models driven by opinion dynamics: vaccine hesitancy and social influence

A. Bondesan, G. Toscani, M. Zanella

Mathematical Model and Methods in Applied Sciences, in press. (Preprint arXiv)

We propose a kinetic model for understanding the link between opinion formation phenomena and epidemic dynamics. The recent pandemic has brought to light that vaccine hesitancy can present different phases and temporal and spatial variations, presumably due to the different social features of individuals.

The emergence of patterns in societal reactions permits to design and predict the trends of a pandemic. This suggests that the problem of vaccine hesitancy can be described in mathematical terms, by suitably coupling a kinetic compartmental model for the spreading of an infectious disease with the evolution of the personal opinion of individuals, in the presence of leaders. The resulting model makes it possible to predict the collective compliance with vaccination campaigns as the pandemic evolves and to highlight the best strategy to set up for maximizing the vaccination coverage. We conduct numerical investigations which confirm the ability of the model to describe different phenomena related to the spread of an epidemic.

Impact of interaction forces in first order many-agent systems for swarm manufacturing

F. Auricchio, M. Carraturo, G. Toscani, M. Zanella.

Disc. Cont. Dyn. Syst. – S, 17(1):78-97, 2024. (Preprint arXiv)

We study the large time behavior of a system of interacting agents modeling the relaxation of a large swarm of robots, whose task is to uniformly cover a portion of the domain by communicating with each other in terms of their distance.

To this end, we generalize a related result for a Fokker-Planck-type model with a nonlocal discontinuous drift and constant diffusion, recently introduced by three of the authors, of which the steady distribution is explicitly computable. For this new nonlocal Fokker-Planck equation, existence, uniqueness and positivity of a global solution are proven, together with precise equilibration rates of the solution towards its quasi-stationary distribution. Numerical experiments are designed to verify the theoretical findings and explore possible extensions to more complex scenarios.

Trends to equilibrium for a nonlocal Fokker-Planck equation

F. Auricchio, G. Toscani, M. Zanella

Applied Math. Letters, 145, 108746, 2023. (Preprint arXiv)

We obtain equilibration rates for a one-dimensional nonlocal Fokker-Planck equation with time-dependent diffusion coefficient and drift, modeling the relaxation of a large swarm of robots, feeling each other in terms of their distance, towards the steady profile characterized by uniform spreading over a finite interval of the line. The result follows by combining entropy methods for quantifying the decay of the solution towards its quasi-stationary distribution, with the properties of the quasi-stationary profile.

Kinetic models for epidemic dynamics in the presence of opinion polarization

M. Zanella

Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 85(5):36, 2023. (Preprint arXiv)

Understanding the impact of collective social phenomena in epidemic dynamics is a crucial task to effectively contain the disease spread. In this work, we build a mathematical description for assessing the interplay between opinion polarization and the evolution of a disease.

The proposed kinetic approach describes the evolution of aggregate quantities characterizing the agents belonging to epidemiologically relevant states and will show that the spread of the disease is closely related to consensus dynamics distribution in which opinion polarization may emerge. In the present modelling framework, microscopic consensus formation dynamics can be linked to macroscopic epidemic trends to trigger the collective adherence to protective measures. We conduct numerical investigations which confirm the ability of the model to describe different phenomena related to the spread of an epidemic.

A kinetic approach to consensus-based segmentation of biomedical images

R. F. Cabini, A. Pichiecchio, A. Lascialfari, S. Figini, M. Zanella

Preprint arXiv, 2022.

In this work, we apply a kinetic version of a bounded confidence consensus model to biomedical segmentation problems. In the presented approach, time-dependent information on the microscopic state of each particle/pixel includes its space position and a feature representing a static characteristic of the system, i.e. the gray level of each pixel. From the introduced microscopic model we derive a kinetic formulation of the model.

The large time behavior of the system is then computed with the aid of a surrogate Fokker-Planck approach that can be obtained in the quasi-invariant scaling. We exploit the computational efficiency of direct simulation Monte Carlo methods for the obtained Boltzmann-type description of the problem for parameter identification tasks. Based on a suitable loss function measuring the distance between the ground truth segmentation mask and the evaluated mask, we minimize the introduced segmentation metric for a relevant set of 2D gray-scale images. Applications to biomedical segmentation concentrate on different imaging research contexts.

On the optimal control of kinetic epidemic models with uncertain social features

J. Franceschi, A. Medaglia, M. Zanella.

Optimal Control, Applications and Methods, online first. (Preprint arXiv)

It is recognized that social heterogeneities in terms of the contact distribution have a strong influence on the spread of infectious diseases. Nevertheless, few data are available and their statistical description does not possess universal patterns and may vary spatially and temporally. It is therefore essential to design optimal control strategies, mimicking the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions, to limit efficiently the number of infected cases.

In this work, starting from a recently introduced kinetic model for epidemiological dynamics that takes into account the impact of social contacts of individuals, we consider an uncertain contact formation dynamics leading to slim-tailed as well as fat-tailed distributions of contacts. Hence, we analyse the effects of an optimal control strategy of the system of agents. Thanks to classical methods of kinetic theory, we couple uncertainty quantification methods with the introduced mathematical model to assess the effects of social limitations. Finally, using the proposed modelling approach and starting from available data, we show the effectiveness of the proposed selective measures to dampen uncertainties together with the epidemic trends.

Stochastic Galerkin particle methods for kinetic equations of plasmas with uncertainties

A. Medaglia, L. Pareschi, M. Zanella

Journal of Computational Physics, 479:112011, 2023. (Preprint arXiv)

The study of uncertainty propagation is of fundamental importance in plasma physics simulations. To this end, in the present work we propose a novel stochastic Galerkin (sG) particle methods for collisional kinetic models of plasmas under the effect of uncertainties.

This class of methods is based on a generalized polynomial chaos (gPC) expansion of the particles’ position and velocity. In details, we introduce a stochastic particle approximation for the Vlasov-Poisson system with a BGK term describing plasma collisions. A careful reformulation of such dynamics is needed to perform the sG projection and to obtain the corresponding system for the gPC coefficients. We show that the sG particle method preserves the main physical properties of the problem, such as conservations and positivity of the solution, while achieving spectral accuracy for smooth solutions in the random space. Furthermore, in the fluid limit the sG particle solver is designed to possess the asymptotic-preserving property necessary to obtain a sG particle scheme for the limiting Euler-Poisson system, thus avoiding the loss of hyperbolicity typical of conventional sG methods based on finite differences or finite volumes. We tested the schemes considering the classical Landau damping problem in the presence of both small and large initial uncertain perturbations, the two stream instability and the Sod shock tube problems under uncertainties. The results show that the proposed method is able to capture the correct behavior of the system in all test cases, even when the relaxation time scale is very small.