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Dr Sergey Sergeyev
Aston University
Research Project Grant
2023

Harnessing collective dynamic structures

Drawing on properties of naturally occurring networks, Sergey Sergeyev and his team explore a testbed laser with many collective states, to provide insight into targeted pattern formation controllable by external perturbation

school of fish in the sea
NaturePicsFilms / Adobe Stock

Our world comprises numerous natural and engineering networks (schools of fish, flocks of birds, swarms of insects, neurons in the cortex, supramolecular complexes, multimode lasers, wireless telecom and sensing networks, and power grids) with distinctive structural elements, size and spatial scale. Though different, many natural networks, at least to some extent, demonstrate universal self-organisation properties driven by localised environmental perturbations. For this reason, naturally occurring networks have been the focus of researchers over the last two decades. In the interdisciplinary context, the developed bio-inspired concepts help to reveal the collective properties of the engineering networks consisting of interacting devices, for example, nodes in wireless telecom and Internet-of-Things networks, loads and generators in power networks, and sensors in sensing networks. 

The originality of my HARVEST project is in applying the novel concept of the controllable manipulation of the self-organisation scenarios (different pulse patterns) in a laser-based model system by using external perturbation in the form of the injected optical signal with a dynamically evolving structure. Given that the weakly-coupled spatial structures (modes) in such laser support an extensive reservoir of the collective states, my approach enables access to many of the states and supports fast patterns tunability via an injected optical signal. The pulses’ ensembles in the laser are different from the chemical supramolecules. However, the underlining physics of the pulses’ self-assembling and transformations mediated by the external forcing is quite similar. In detail, tailoring the injected pulse’s structure will facilitate manipulation of the pulses’ structures in terms of assembling, dissociation, oscillations and switching to another type that optically mimics the behaviour of chemical supramolecules. Thus, beyond the significance of fast manipulation of the optical waveforms for the controllable laser dynamics and encoding information in non-binary formats, the model system can play the role of a platform for emulating external perturbation-driven large-scale collective targeted pattern formation in engineering, chemical and biological systems. For the engineering networks (wireless telecom and sensing networks, power grids), more advanced control systems can be developed based on the suggested approach for supporting higher flexibility and resilience of the reconfiguration of the network under demand and consuming the lower power.

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