The Sznajd model or United we stand, divided we fall (USDF) model is a sociophysics model introduced in 2000 [1] to gain fundamental understanding about opinion dynamics. The Sznajd model implements a phenomenon called social validation and thus extends the Ising spin model. In simple words, the model states:
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For simplicity, one assumes that each individual has an opinion Si which might be Boolean ( for no, for yes) in its simplest formulation, which means that each individual either agrees or disagrees to a given question.
In the original 1D-formulation, each individual has exactly two neighbors just like beads on a bracelet. At each time step a pair of individual and is chosen at random to change their nearest neighbors' opinion (or: Ising spins) and according to two dynamical rules:
In a closed (1 dimensional) community, two steady states are always reached, namely complete consensus (which is called ferromagnetic state in physics) or stalemate (the antiferromagnetic state). Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulations showed that these simple rules lead to complicated dynamics, in particular to a power law in the decision time distribution with an exponent of -1.5. [2]
The final (antiferromagnetic) state of alternating all-on and all-off is unrealistic to represent the behavior of a community. It would mean that the complete population uniformly changes their opinion from one time step to the next. For this reason an alternative dynamical rule was proposed. One possibility is that two spins and change their nearest neighbors according to the two following rules: [3]
In recent years, statistical physics has been accepted as modeling framework for phenomena outside the traditional physics. Fields as econophysics or sociophysics formed, and many quantitative analysts in finance are physicists. The Ising model in statistical physics has been a very important step in the history of studying collective (critical) phenomena. The Sznajd model is a simple but yet important variation of prototypical Ising system. [4]
In 2007, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron has been recognized by the Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Physical Society) for an outstanding original contribution using physical methods to develop a better understanding of socio-economic problems. [5]
The Sznajd model belongs to the class of binary-state dynamics on a networks also referred to as Boolean networks. This class of systems includes the Ising model, the voter model and the q-voter model, the Bass diffusion model, threshold models and others. [6] The Sznajd model can be applied to various fields:
Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices. The field of spintronics concerns spin-charge coupling in metallic systems; the analogous effects in insulators fall into the field of multiferroics.
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The Landau–Zener formula is an analytic solution to the equations of motion governing the transition dynamics of a two-state quantum system, with a time-dependent Hamiltonian varying such that the energy separation of the two states is a linear function of time. The formula, giving the probability of a diabatic transition between the two energy states, was published separately by Lev Landau, Clarence Zener, Ernst Stueckelberg, and Ettore Majorana, in 1932.
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Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018. He was a co-editor of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics from 2017–2019.
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