Related papers: Love might be a second-order phase transition
The formalism used in describing the thermodynamics of abrupt (or first-order) phase transitions is reviewed as an application of maximum entropy inference. In this treatment, we show that the concepts of transition temperature, latent heat…
The following is a thermodynamic analysis of a III order (and some aspects of a IV order) phase transition. Such a transition can occur in a superconductor if the normal state is a diamagnet. The equation for a phase boundary in an H-T (H…
First-order irreversible phase transitions (IPT's) between an active regime and an absorbing state are studied in two models by means of both simulations and mean-field stability analysis. Hysteresis around coexistence is the result of the…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
We study a random matrix model for the statistical properties of the purity of a bipartite quantum system at a finite (fictitious) temperature. This enables us to write the generating function for the cumulants, for both balanced and…
In recent years a fashion has grown up to ascribe great importance to ``quantum critical points'' at T=0, at the boundary between the basins of attraction to the stable fixed points of ordered ground states. I argue that more physical…
We examine the phase transition phenomenon for the Knapsack problem from both a computational and a human perspective. We first provide, via an empirical and a theoretical analysis, a characterization of the phenomenon in terms of two…
An often-overlooked characteristic of the human mind is its propensity to wander. Despite growing interest in the science of mind-wandering, most studies operationalize mind-wandering by its task-unrelated contents, which may be orthogonal…
A quantum phase transition is an unequivocal signature of strongly correlated many-body physics. Signatures of such phenomena are yet to be observed in ballistic transport through quantum wires. Recent developments in quantum wires have…
In certain modified gravity theories that include additional scalar degrees of freedom, compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars may undergo a process known as spontaneous scalarization, in which the scalar field is suddenly…
Statistical physics can describe the behavior of microbial populations consisting of many heterogeneous individuals. A direct consequence is the existence of phase transitions, where the behavior of a population changes discontinuously upon…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has recently emerged as an important topic in the context of cellular organization. Within this context, there are multiple poorly understood features; for instance hints of critical behavior in the plasma…
We find a series of topological phase transitions of increasing order, beyond the more standard second-order phase transition in a one-dimensional topological superconductor. The jumps in the order of the transitions depend on the range of…
A major unresolved question in Neuroscience is: What is the origin of the observed scale-invariant correlations in neural activity? Many researchers support the ``criticality hypothesis,'' which proposes that the brain operates near…
The chiral phase transition at a certain critical temperature is a restoration mechanism of the chiral symmetry, broken by the nonzero mass of quarks and mesons. The transition can be studied through several models, among which are the…
We study first order phase transitions that occur when the temperature of the system increases and we identify the conditions that lead to super-heating, a phase where the system can heat up arbitrarily. First order phase transitions with…
The phase diagram of a system constituted of neutrons and $\Lambda$-hyperons in thermal equilibrium is evaluated in the mean-field approximation. It is shown that this simple system exhibits a complex phase diagram with first and second…
The study of liquid-liquid phase transition has attracted considerable attention. One interesting example of such phenomenon is phosphorus for which the existence a first-order phase transition between a low density insulating molecular…
While classical theory of phase transitions deals with systems where shape variation is energetically neutral, the account of rigidity can lead to the emergence of new thermodynamic features. One of them is a special type of critical points…
We study the spin-glass transition in a disordered quantum model. There is a region in the phase diagram where quantum effects are small and the phase transition is second order, as in the classical case. In another region, quantum…