Related papers: Entropy favors heterogeneous structures of network…
In these lectures I discuss long-scale properties of fluctuating polymerized membranes in the presence of network anisotropy and random heterogeneities. Amazingly, even infinitesimal amount of these seemingly innocuous but physically…
We review in this paper the signatures of a new elastic phase that is found in glasses with selected compositions. It is shown that in contrast with random networks, where rigidity percolates at a single threshold, networks that are able to…
Amorphous solids are mechanically rigid while possessing a disordered structure similar to that of dense liquids. Recent research indicates that dynamical heterogeneity, spatio-temporal fluctuations in local dynamical behavior, might help…
The rigid to floppy transitions and the associated intermediate phase in glasses are studied in the case where the local structure is not fully determined from the macroscopic concentration. The approach uses size increasing cluster…
Glass is a microscopically disordered, solid form of matter that results when a fluid is cooled or compressed in such a fashion that it does not crystallise. Almost all types of materials are capable of glass formation -- polymers, metal…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
Criticality has been proposed as a mechanism for the emergence of complexity, life, and computation, as it exhibits a balance between robustness and adaptability. In classic models of complex systems where structure and dynamics are…
A thermodynamic measure of the fragility of liquids has recently (Ito et al ref.1) been defined in terms of the temperature dependence of the excess entropy of liquid over crystal, scaled by the excess entropy at the glass transition…
In simplified models of glasses we clarify the existence of two different kinds of activated dynamics, which coexist, with one of the two dominating over the other. One is the energy barrier hopping that is typically used to picture…
We show how dynamical heterogeneities in glass forming systems emerge as a consequence of the existence of dynamical constraints, and we offer an interpretation of the glass transition as an entropy crisis in trajectory space (space-time)…
Dynamic heterogeneity is now recognised as a central aspect of structural relaxation in disordered materials with slow dynamics, and was the focus of intense research in the last decade. Here we describe how initial, indirect observations…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…
Entropy relates the fast, microscopic behaviour of the elements in a system to its slow, macroscopic state. We propose to use it to explain how, as complexity theory suggests, small scale decisions of individuals form cities. For this, we…
In network glass including chalcogenides, the network topology of microscopic structures can be tuned by changing the chemical compositions. As the composition is varied, an intermediate phase (IP) singularly different from the adjacent…
We study expanding circle maps interacting in a heterogeneous random network. Heterogeneity means that some nodes in the network are massively connected, while the remaining nodes are only poorly connected. We provide a probabilistic…
Apart from not having crystallized, supercooled liquids can be considered as being properly equilibrated and thus can be described by a few thermodynamic control variables. In contrast, glasses and other amorphous solids can be arbitrarily…
Long range order and symmetry in heterogeneous materials architected on crystal lattices lead to elastic and inelastic anisotropies and thus limit mechanical functionalities in particular crystallographic directions. Here, we present a…
We study collective dynamics of complex networks of stochastic excitable elements, active rotators. In the thermodynamic limit of infinite number of elements, we apply a mean-field theory for the network and then use a Gaussian…
Most models of complex systems have been homogeneous, i.e., all elements have the same properties (spatial, temporal, structural, functional). However, most natural systems are heterogeneous: few elements are more relevant, larger,…
There is growing evidence that electronic and molecular networks present some common universal properties, among which the existence of a self-organized intermediate phase. In glasses, the latter is revealed by the reversibility window…