Related papers: Incompatible sets of gradients and metastability
We report an extensive experimental study of a detachment front dynamics instability, appearing at microscopic scales during the peeling of adhesive tapes. The amplitude of this instability scales with its period as $A_{\text{mss}} \propto…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
The present work is an endeavour to determine analytically features of the stationary measure of a non-integrable zero-range process, and to investigate the possible existence of phase transitions for such a nonequilibrium model. The rates…
We study Glauber dynamics for the low temperature $(2+1)$D Solid-On-Solid model on a box of side-length $n$ with a floor at height $0$ (inducing entropic repulsion) and a competing bulk external field $\lambda$ pointing down (the prewetting…
Inspired by recent experiments, we present a phase-field model of microphase separation in an elastomer swollen with a solvent. The imbalance between the molecular scale of demixing and the mesoscopic scale beyond which elasticity operates…
We consider the possibility that the gauge hierarchy is a byproduct of the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, i.e., that whatever mechanism is responsible for the latter also sets the running Higgs mass to a value smaller than its…
We provide a framework for understanding dynamical metastability in open many-body systems of free bosons, whereby the dynamical stability properties of the system in the infinite-size (thermodynamic) limit may sharply differ from those of…
The relation between thermodynamic phase transitions in classical systems and topology changes in their configuration space is discussed for a one-dimensional, analytically tractable solid-on-solid model. The topology of a certain family of…
When a liquid melt is cooled, a glass or phase transition can be obtained depending on the cooling rate. Yet, this behavior has not been clearly captured in energy landscape models. Here a model is provided in which two key ingredients are…
We consider the growth of a vicinal crystal surface in the presence of a step-edge barrier. For any value of the barrier strength, measured by the length l_es, nucleation of islands on terraces is always able to destroy asymptotically…
We study a zero-range process with system-size dependent jump rates, which is known to exhibit a discontinuous condensation transition. Metastable homogeneous phases and condensed phases coexist in extended phase regions around the…
Optically excited quantum materials exhibit nonequilibrium states with remarkable emergent properties, but these phenomena are usually transient, decaying on picosecond timescales and limiting practical applications. Advancing the design…
Potential wells are employed to constrain quantum particles into forming discrete energy levels, acting as artificial few-level systems. In contrast, an anti-parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric system can have a single pair of real…
In a recent publication we established an analogy between the free energy of a hard sphere system and the energy of an elastic network [1]. This result enables one to study the free energy landscape of hard spheres, in particular to define…
Various phase transitions in models for coupled charge-density waves are investigated by means of the $\epsilon$-expansion, mean-field theory, and Monte Carlo simulations. At zero temperature the effective action for the system with…
The recent paper cited above claims that a molecular simulation of one specific model of supercooled water establishes a stable interface separating two metastable liquid phases, which would imply the existence of metastable two-liquid…
Metastable phases present a promising route to expand the functionality of complex materials. Of particular interest are light-induced metastable phases that are inaccessible under equilibrium conditions, as they often host new, emergent…
We show that a flat two dimensional network of connected vertices, when stretched, may deform plastically by producing `pleats'; system spanning linear structures with width comparable to the lattice spacing, where the network overlaps on…
Energy functionals describing phase transitions in crystalline solids are often non-quasiconvex and minimizers might therefore not exist. On the other hand, there might be infinitely many gradient Young measures, modelling microstructures,…
We show that the interaction of a particle with a directionally solidified interface induces the onset of morphological instability provided that the particle-interface distance falls below a critical value. This instability occurs at…