Related papers: Of Naturalness and Complexity
The phenomenon of universality is one of the most striking in many-body physics. Despite having sometimes wildly different microscopic constituents, systems can nonetheless behave in precisely the same way, with only the variable names…
Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property. Other characteristics associated with…
Quantum mechanics allows coherent superposition between different states of matter. This quality is responsible for major non-classical phenomena that occur in quantum systems. Beyond states, coherent superpositions are also possible…
Complex spatiotemporal patterns in nature significantly challenge reductionism-based modern science. The lack of a paradigm beyond reductionism hinders our understanding of the emergence of complexity. The diversity of countless patterns…
High resolution numerical simulations of stationary inverse energy cascade in two-dimensional turbulence are presented. Deviations from Gaussianity of velocity differences statistics are quantitatively investigated. The level of statistical…
During the past decade a number of attempts to formulate a continuum description of complex states of matter have been proposed to circumvent more cumbersome many-body and simulation methods. Typically these have been quantum systems (e.g.,…
There have been many claims that quantum mechanics plays a key role in the origin and/or operation of biological organisms, beyond merely providing the basis for the shapes and sizes of biological molecules and their chemical affinities.…
If there are fundamental laws of nature, can they fail to be exact? In this paper, I consider the possibility that some fundamental laws are vague. I call this phenomenon 'fundamental nomic vagueness.' I characterize fundamental nomic…
Set theory reduces all processes to assembly and disassembly. A similar architecture is proposed for nature as quantum computer. It resolves the classical space-time underlying Feynman diagrams into a quantum network of creation and…
Quantum vorticity occurs in superfluidity, which arises from a spatial variation of the quantum phase. As such, it can occur in diverse systems over a wide range of scales, from the electroweak sector and QCD of the standard model of…
The question how complex systems become more organized and efficient with time is open. Examples are, the formation of elementary particles from pure energy, the formation of atoms from particles, the formation of stars and galaxies, the…
The problem of Turing pattern formation has attracted much attention in nonlinear science as well as physics, chemistry and biology. So far all Turing patterns have been observed in stationary and oscillatory media only. In this letter we…
Quantum theory is extremely successful in explaining most physical phenomena, and is not contradicted by any experiment. Yet, the theory has many puzzling features : the occurrence of probabilities, the unclear distinction between the…
Some general considerations on the notion of entropy in physics are presented. An attempt is made to clarify the question of the differentiation between physical entropy (the Clausius-Boltzmann one) and quantities called entropies…
In the statistical description of dynamical systems, an indication of the irreversibility of a given state change is given geometrically by means of a (pre-)ordering of state pairs. Reversible state changes of classical and quantum systems…
We argue that complex systems science and the rules of quantum physics are intricately related. We discuss a range of quantum phenomena, such as cryptography, computation and quantum phases, and the rules responsible for their complexity.…
Recent experimental results point to the existence of coherent quantum phenomena in systems made of a large number of particles, despite the fact that for many-body systems the presence of decoherence is hardly negligible and emerging…
The recent discovery of universal principles underlying many complex networks occurring across a wide range of length scales in the biological world has spurred physicists in trying to understand such features using techniques from…
In natural settings, intermittent dynamics are ubiquitous and often arise from a coupling between external driving and spatial heterogeneities. A well-known example is the generation of transient, turbulent puffs of fluid through a pipe…
Invariance properties of physical systems govern their behavior: energy conservation in turbulence drives a wide distribution of energy among modes, observed in geophysical or astrophysical flows. In ideal hydrodynamics, the role of…