Related papers: Criticality of tuning in athermal phase transition…
The significance of thermal fluctuations on nucleation in structural first-order phase transitions has been examined. The prototype case of martensitic transitions has been experimentally investigated by means of acoustic emission…
Dynamical phase transitions can occur in isolated quantum systems that are brought out of equilibrium by sudden parameter changes. We discuss the characterization of such dynamical phase transitions based on the statistics of produced…
Critical transitions, or large changes in the state of a system after a small change in the system's external conditions or parameters, commonly occur in a wide variety of disciplines, from the biological and social sciences to physics.…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has recently emerged as an important topic in the context of cellular organization. Within this context, there are multiple poorly understood features; for instance hints of critical behavior in the plasma…
Classical phase transitions, like solid-liquid-gas or order-disorder spin magnetic phases, are all driven by thermal energy fluctuations by varying the temperature. On the other hand, quantum phase transitions happen at absolute zero…
The most important recent results in the theory of phase transitions and quantum effects in quantum anharmonic crystals are presented and discussed. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions for a phase transition to occur at some…
The critical behavior at the transition from uniform nematic to twist-bend modulated nematic phase is revealed and shown to be well explained by the mean field approximation. The study was performed on a group of materials that exhibit an…
Nonlinear dynamical systems may be exposed to tipping points, critical thresholds at which small changes in the external inputs or in the systems parameters abruptly shift the system to an alternative state with a contrasting dynamical…
We reveal a prethermal temporal regime upon suddenly quenching to the vicinity of a quantum phase transition in the time evolution of 1D spin chains. The prethermal regime is analytically found to be self-similar, and its duration is…
We study the effect of thermal fluctuations on the critical dynamics of the three-dimensional disordered superconductor across the normal-superconducting transition. We employ a phenomenological hydrodynamic approach, and in particular find…
While classical theory of phase transitions deals with systems where shape variation is energetically neutral, the account of rigidity can lead to the emergence of new thermodynamic features. One of them is a special type of critical points…
In striking contrast to equilibrium systems, inertia can profoundly alter the structure of active systems. Here, we demonstrate that driven systems can exhibit effective equilibrium-like states with increasing particle inertia, despite…
Phase transition between ferroelectricity and quantum paraelectricity via non-thermal tuning parameters can lead to quantum critical behavior and associated emergent phenomena. Ferroelectric quantum critical systems are, however, rare…
Using in a simple way the theory of non linear dynamical systems, we show that increasing climatic instabilities may be a qualitative warning sign for the occurrence of a nearby bifurcation, yielding a discontinuous and sudden climate…
At low temperature a thermodynamic system undergoes a phase transition when a physical parameter passes through a singularity point of the free energy, corresponding to formation of a new order. At high temperature the thermal fluctuations…
A sweep through a quantum phase transition by means of a time-dependent external parameter (e.g., pressure) entails non-equilibrium phenomena associated with a break-down of adiabaticity: At the critical point, the energy gap vanishes and…
The yielding transition that occurs in amorphous solids under athermal quasistatic deformation has been the subject of many theoretical and computational studies. Here, we extend this analysis to include thermal effects at finite shear…
Possible universal dynamics of a many-body system far from thermal equilibrium are explored. A focus is set on meta-stable non-thermal states exhibiting critical properties such as self-similarity and independence of the details of how the…
Bifurcations can cause dynamical systems with slowly varying parameters to transition to far-away attractors. The terms ``critical transition'' or ``tipping point'' have been used to describe this situation. Critical transitions have been…
The potential for complex systems to exhibit tipping points in which an equilibrium state undergoes a sudden and often irreversible shift is well established, but prediction of these events using standard forecast modeling techniques is…