Pith. sign in

REVIEW

Noise-induced transition to stop-and-go waves in single-file traffic rationalized by an analogy with Kapitza's inverted pendulum

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2503.23594 v1 pith:AMIT5UDQ submitted 2025-03-30 physics.soc-ph

Noise-induced transition to stop-and-go waves in single-file traffic rationalized by an analogy with Kapitza's inverted pendulum

classification physics.soc-ph
keywords stop-and-gotrafficinstabilitykapitzalinearmechanismpendulumsingle-file
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Stop-and-go waves in vehicular traffic are commonly explained as a linear collective instability induced by e.g. response delays. We explore an alternative mechanism that more faithfully mirrors oscillation formation in dense single-file traffic. Stochastic noise plays a key role in this model; as it is increased, the base (uniform) flow abruptly switches to stop-and-go dynamics despite its unconditional linear stability. We elucidate the instability mechanism and rationalize it quantitatively by likening the system to a cyclically driven Kapitza pendulum.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.