Abstract-Schelling's model of segregation looks to explain the way in which particles or agents of two types may come to arrange themselves spatially into configurations consisting of large homogeneous clusters, i.e. connected regions consisting of only one type. As one of the earliest agent based models studied by economists and perhaps the most famous model of self-organising behaviour, it also has direct links to areas at the interface between computer science and statistical mechanics, such as the Ising model and the study of contagion and cascading phenomena in networks.While the model has been extensively studied it has largely resisted rigorous analysis, prior results from the literature generally pertaining to variants of the model which are tweaked so as to be amenable to standard techniques from statistical mechanics or stochastic evolutionary game theory. In [2], Brandt, Immorlica, Kamath and Kleinberg provided the first rigorous analysis of the unperturbed model, for a specific set of input parameters. Here we provide a rigorous analysis of the model's behaviour much more generally and establish some surprising forms of threshold behaviour, notably the existence of situations where an increased level of intolerance for neighbouring agents of opposite type leads almost certainly to decreased segregation.

Thomas Schelling's spacial proximity model illustrated how racial segregation can emerge, unwanted, from the actions of citizens acting in accordance with their individual local preferences. One of the earliest agent-based models, it is closely related both to the spin-1 models of statistical physics, and to cascading phenomena on networks. Here a 1-dimensional unperturbed variant of the model is studied, which is open in the sense that agents may enter and exit the model. Following the authors' previous work [1] and that of Brandt, Immorlica, Kamath, and Kleinberg in [4], rigorous asymptotic results are established.This model's openness allows either race to take over almost everywhere. Tipping points are identified between the regions of takeover and staticity. In a significant generalization of the models considered in [1] and [4], the model's parameters comprise the initial proportions of the two races, along with independent values of the tolerance for each race.

In this paper we consider classes of finite structures where we have good control over the sizes of the definable sets. The motivating example is the class of finite fields: it was shown in [1] that for any formula in the language of rings, there are finitely many pairs (d, μ) ∈ ω × Q>0 so that in any finite field F and for any ā ∈ Fm the size |ø(Fn,ā)| is “approximately” μ|F|d. Essentially this is a generalisation of the classical Lang-Weil estimates from the category of varieties to that of the first-order-definable sets.

Schelling's models of segregation, first described in 1969 [18] are among the best known models of self-organising behaviour. Their original purpose was to identify mechanisms of urban racial segregation. But his models form part of a family which arises in statistical mechanics, neural networks, social science, and beyond, where populations of agents interact on networks. Despite extensive study, unperturbed Schelling models have largely resisted rigorous analysis, prior results generally focusing on variants in which noise is introduced into the dynamics, the resulting system being amenable to standard techniques from statistical mechanics or stochastic evolutionary game theory [25]. A series of recent papers [6,3,4], has seen the first rigorous analyses of 1-dimensional unperturbed Schelling models, in an asymptotic framework largely unknown in statistical mechanics. Here we provide the first such analysis of 2-and 3-dimensional unperturbed models, establishing most of the phase diagram, and answering a challenge from [6].

We consider low-dimensional groups and group-actions that are definable in a supersimple theory of finite rank. We show that any rank 1 unimodular group is (finite-by-Abelian)-by-finite, and that any 2-dimensional asymptotic group is soluble-by-finite. We obtain a field-interpretation theorem for certain measurable groups, and give an analysis of minimal normal subgroups and socles in groups definable in a supersimple theory of finite rank where infinity is definable. We prove a primitivity theorem for measurable group actions.

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We consider groups G interpretable in a supersimple finite rank theory T such that T eq eliminates ∃ ∞ . It is shown that G has a definable soluble radical. If G has rank 2, then if G is pseudofinite, it is soluble-by-finite, and partial results are obtained under weaker hypotheses, such as 'functional unimodularity' of the theory. A classification is obtained when T is pseudofinite and G has a definable and definably primitive action on a rank 1 set.

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