In the case of decomposition based MaOPs, for example NSGA3, some predefined Ref.Points are associated to the population members in order to decompose a Many Objective problems to the series of multi/single objective problem!!
The Ref. points or vector which are also in some cases different with each other, decomposes the objective space with the use of vectors from the origin to the desired point.
So while the algorithms is being ran, the population members gather around their own associated Ref.point so each Ref. point make some particles just to search the area around it in order to enhance the diversity of the population!