Related papers: Critical slowing down in purely elastic `snap-thro…
In this paper, we tackle the open problem of snap-stabilization in message-passing systems. Snap-stabilization is a nice approach to design protocols that withstand transient faults. Compared to the well-known self-stabilizing approach,…
Mechanical waves that travel without inertia are often encountered in nature -- e.g. motion of plants -- yet such waves remain rare in synthetic materials. Here, we discover the emergence of slow kinks in overdamped metamaterials and we…
It is shown how the combination of atomic deposition and nonlinear diffusion may lead, below a critical temperature, to the growth of nonuniform layers on a substrate. The dynamics of such a system is of the Cahn-Hilliard type, supplemented…
When some granular material contained into a silo is pushed upwards with a piston, an irregular stick-slip motion of the system of grains is observed. We show how one can adapt the `Scalar Arching Model' -- proposed as a model for giant…
We observe and characterize intrinsic optical bistability in a dilute Rydberg vapor. The bistability is characterized by sharp jumps between states of low and high Rydberg occupancy with jump up and down positions displaying hysteresis…
Snapping beams enable rapid geometric transitions through nonlinear instability, offering an efficient means of generating motion in soft robotic systems. In this study, a tendon-driven mechanism consisting of spiral-based metabeams was…
Fast-slow systems are studied usually by "geometrical dissection". The fast dynamics exhibit attractors which may bifurcate under the influence of the slow dynamics which is seen as a parameter of the fast dynamics. A generic solution comes…
The structural arrest of a polymeric suspension might be driven by an increase of the cross--linker concentration, that drives the gel transition, as well as by an increase of the polymer density, that induces a glass transition. These…
When a liquid drop falls on a solid substrate, the air layer in between them delays the occurrence of liquid--solid contact. For impacts on smooth substrates, the air film can even prevent wetting, allowing the drop to bounce off with…
We numerically study a simple sliding system: a rigid mass pulled by a spring with a strong in-plane stiffness anisotropy and a small misalignment angle. Simulations show that the apparent stick phase appearing in this system is in reality…
Recent observations of hydrostatic structure and virial equilibrium in supersonically turbulent, self-gravitating molecular clouds imply a stability that contrasts with the transcience of turbulent structure. To investigate this…
We study the instability development during a viscous liquid drop impacting a smooth substrate, using high speed photography. The onset time of the instability highly depends on the surrounding air pressure and the liquid viscosity: it…
Biological studies show that hummingbirds can perform extreme aerobatic maneuvers during fast escape. Given a sudden looming visual stimulus at hover, a hummingbird initiates a fast backward translation coupled with a 180-degree yaw turn,…
Physical systems with loss or gain feature resonant modes that are decaying or growing exponentially with time. Whenever two such modes coalesce both in their resonant frequency and their rate of decay or growth, a so-called "exceptional…
We investigate experimentally the dynamics of an intruder dragged by a constant force in an assembly of horizontally vibrated grains close to jamming. At moderate packing fractions, the intruder moves rapidly as soon as the force is…
A nonlinear dynamical system model that approximates a microscopic Gibbs field model for the yielding of a viscoplastic material subjected to varying external stress recently reported in [1] is presented. The predictions of the model are in…
It was recently discovered that SWAP, a Monte Carlo algorithm that involves the exchange of pairs of particles of differing diameters, can dramatically accelerate the equilibration of simulated supercooled liquids in regimes where the…
The natural wind environment that volant insects encounter is unsteady and highly complex, posing significant flight control and stability challenges. Unsteady airflows can range from structured chains of discrete vortices shed in the wake…
The unjamming transition of granular systems is investigated in a seismic fault model via three dimensional Molecular Dynamics simulations. A two--time force--force correlation function, and a susceptibility related to the system response…
We study dynamic networks under an undirected consensus communication protocol and with one state-dependent weighted edge. We assume that the aforementioned dynamic edge can take values over the whole real numbers, and that its behaviour…