Related papers: Physics and Complexity: a brief spin glass perspec…
This paper is concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It attempts to indicate and…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
Theoretical research into many-body quantum systems has mostly focused on regular structures which have a small, simple unit cell and where a vanishingly small number of pairs of the constituents directly interact. Motivated by advances in…
In complex systems, the interplay between nonlinear and stochastic dynamics, e.g., J. Monod's necessity and chance, gives rise to an evolutionary process in Darwinian sense, in terms of discrete jumps among attractors, with punctuated…
Biological systems, unlike physical or chemical systems, are characterized by the very inhomogeneous distribution of their components. The immune system, in particular, is notable for self-organizing its structure. Classically, the dynamics…
The fast changing reality in technical and natural domains perceived by always more accurate observations has drawn attention on new and very broad class of systems with specific behaviour represented under the common wording complexity.…
This article is a follow-up of a short essay that appeared in Nature 455, 1181 (2008) [arXiv:0810.5306]. It has become increasingly clear that the erratic dynamics of markets is mostly endogenous and not due to the rational processing of…
Extensive cooperation among unrelated individuals is unique to humans, who often sacrifice personal benefits for the common good and work together to achieve what they are unable to execute alone. The evolutionary success of our species is…
Biological systems reach hierarchical complexity that has no counterpart outside the realm of biology. Undoubtedly, biological entities obey the fundamental physical laws. Can today's physics provide an explanatory framework for…
We discuss the relevance of studying ecology within the framework of Complexity Science from a statistical mechanics approach. Ecology is concerned with understanding how systems level properties emerge out of the multitude of interactions…
The basic laws of physics are simple, so why is the world complex? The theory of self-organized criticality posits that complex behavior in nature emerges from the dynamics of extended, dissipative systems that evolve through a sequence of…
The paper is devoted to further development of the new approach in equilibrium statistical mechanics the basis of which was worked out in a series of articles by the author. The approach proceeds on the use of a hierarchy of equations for…
Interaction is so ubiquitous that imaging a world free from it is a difficult fantasy exercise. At the same time, in understanding any complex physical system, our ability of accounting for the mutual interaction of its constituents is…
The standard assumptions that underlie many conceptual and quantitative frameworks do not hold for many complex physical, biological, and social systems. Complex systems science clarifies when and why such assumptions fail and provides…
The behaviour of elastic structures undergoing large deformations is the result of the competition between confining conditions, self-avoidance and elasticity. This combination of multiple phenomena creates a geometrical frustration that…
Statistical physics has proven to be a very fruitful framework to describe phenomena outside the realm of traditional physics. The last years have witnessed the attempt by physicists to study collective phenomena emerging from the…
Physicists study a wide variety of phenomena creating new interdisciplinary research fields by applying theories and methods originally developed in physics in order to solve problems in economics, social science, biology, medicine,…
Many complex systems are representable as macroscopic set of elements which interact by simple rules. The complex macroscopically relevant phenomena are then the result of the generic emergence of a space-time multi-scale dynamics. Critical…
Large complexes of classical particles play central roles in biology, in polymer physics, and in other disciplines. However, physics currently lacks mathematical methods for describing such complexes in terms of component particles,…
Spin glasses are magnetic systems exhibiting both quenched disorder and frustration, and have often been cited as examples of `complex systems.' In this talk I review some of the basic notions of spin glass physics, and discuss how some of…