Related papers: Interpreting Force Response Patterns of a Mechanic…
Understanding how a flow turns into an amorphous solid is a fundamental challenge in statistical physics, during which no apparent structural ordering appears. In the athermal limit, the two states are connected by a well-defined jamming…
Particle theorists typically use expectation values to study the quantum back-reaction on inflation, whereas many cosmologists stress the stochastic nature of the process. While expectation values certainly give misleading results for some…
A phase transition indicates a sudden change in the properties of a large system. For temperature-driven phase transitions this is related to non-analytic behavior of the free energy density at the critical temperature: The knowledge of the…
First-order phase transition in a highly correlated electron system can manifest as a dynamic phenomenon. The presence of multiple domains of the coexisting phases average out the dynamical effects making it nearly impossible to predict the…
The fate of cities under natural hazards depends not only on hazard intensity but also on the coupling of structural damage, a collective process that remains poorly understood. Here we show that urban structural damage exhibits…
Group-based reinforcement can induce discontinuous transitions from inactive to active phases in higher-order contagion models. However, these results are typically obtained on static interaction structures or within mean-field…
This Thesis explores how tools from Statistical Physics and Information Theory can help us describe and understand complex systems. In the first part, we study the interplay between internal interactions, environmental changes, and…
We use molecular dynamics to show that plastic slip is a crucial component of the transformation mechanism of a square-to-triangular structural transition. The latter is a stylized analog of many other reconstructive phase transitions. To…
Ability of dynamical systems to relax to equilibrium has been investigated since the invention of statistical mechanics, which establishes the connection between dynamics of many-body Hamiltonian systems and phenomenological thermodynamics.…
I give a highly selective overview of the way statistical mechanics explains the microscopic origins of the time asymmetric evolution of macroscopic systems towards equilibrium and of first order phase transitions in equilibrium. These…
We present a systematic mathematical analysis of the qualitative steady-state response to rate perturbations in large classes of reaction networks. This includes multimolecular reactions and allows for catalysis, enzymatic reactions,…
We utilize the externally forced linearized Navier-Stokes equations to study the receptivity of pre-transitional boundary layers to persistent sources of stochastic excitation. Stochastic forcing is used to model the effect of free-stream…
Experimental studies of protein-pattern formation have stimulated new interest in the dynamics of reaction-diffusion systems. However, a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the dynamics of such highly nonlinear, spatially extended…
Motivated by the modeling of three-dimensional fluid turbulence, we define and study a class of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) that are randomly stirred by a spatially smooth and uncorrelated in time forcing term. To…
A new phase field crystal (PFC) type theory is presented, which accounts for the full spectrum of solid-liquid-vapor phase transitions within the framework of a single density order parameter. Its equilibrium properties show the most…
Discrete time crystals are related to non-equilibrium dynamics of periodically driven quantum many-body systems where the discrete time translation symmetry of the Hamiltonian is spontaneously broken into another discrete symmetry.…
We investigate the driven states of a two-dimensional crystal whose ground state can be tuned through a square-triangular transition. The depinning of such a system from a quenched random background potential occurs via a complex sequence…
We examine the dynamics of statistical fluctuations in nuclear matter. Linear response functions for the average phase space density are derived within Landau theory. Properties of the stochastic forces are deduced from the quantal…
Nearly-elastic model systems with one or two degrees of freedom are considered: the system is undergoing a small loss of energy in each collision with the "wall". We show that instabilities in this purely deterministic system lead to…
The dynamics of phase transitions plays a crucial r\^ole in the so-called interface between high energy particle physics and cosmology. Many of the interesting results generated during the last fifteen years or so rely on simplified…