Related papers: Athermal fluctuations in three dimensional disorde…
We analyze a one dimensional quantum model with off-diagonal disorder, consisting of a sequence of potential energy barriers whose width is a random variable either uniformly or normally distributed. We investigate how the disorder and the…
We demonstrate that two-dimensional crystals made of active particles can experience extremely large spontaneous deformations without melting. Using particles mostly interacting via pairwise repulsive forces, we show that such active…
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from…
In this thesis I present most of the results obtained during my PhD, where I worked on different subjects regarding jamming in systems of frictionless spheres. In particular, I focused on microscopic properties of jammed packings, such as…
One dimensional systems are under intense investigation, both from theoretical and experimental points of view, since they have rather peculiar characteristics which are of both conceptual and technological interest. We analyze the…
Disclinations, first observed in mesomorphic phases, are relevant to a number of ill-ordered condensed matter media, with continuous symmetries or frustrated order. They also appear in polycrystals at the edges of grain boundaries. They are…
In two-dimensional tissues, such as developing germ layers, pair-wise forces (or active stresses) arise from the contractile activity of the cytoskeleton, with dissipation provided by the three-dimensional surroundings. We show analytically…
We provide numerical constructions of one-dimensional hyperuniform many-particle distributions that exhibit unusual clustering and asymptotic local number density fluctuations growing more slowly than the volume of an observation window but…
We describe a many-body theory for interlayer dispersion forces between weakly disordered atomically thin crystals and numerically investigate the role of disorder for different layer-separation distances and for different densities of…
We study the early-stage kinetics of thermodynamically unstable systems with quenched disorder. We show analytically that the growth of initial fluctuations is amplified by the presence of disorder. This is confirmed by numerical…
The theory of orbital magnetism in disordered metals is reviewed, and extended to include a broad range of temperatures and fields. Sample-to-sample fluctuations in the orbital magnetic susceptibility are studied. In a given sample these…
Previous studies have suggested a conundrum in the relaxation dynamics of polydisperse supercooled liquids. It has been shown that in two dimensions, the relative relaxation times of particles of different sizes become more similar as the…
Photonic crystals are extremely sensitive to structural disorder even to the point of completely losing their functionalities. While on one side this can be detrimental for applications in traditional optical devices, on the other side, it…
This Ph.D. thesis is divided in two parts. The first one concerns the equilibrium properties of glassy systems. Some aspects of the phenomenology of glasses and of theories attempting to describe them are reviewed in chapter 1. A study of…
We introduce a three-dimensional model for jamming and glasses, and prove that the fraction of frozen particles is discontinuous at the directed-percolation critical density. In agreement with the accepted scenario for jamming- and…
The transport of individual entities through interconnected structures is a process of practical relevance both in biology and technology. Examples are given by diffusive dynamics of molecules in porous structures. In soft environments,…
We study a model of rolling particles subject to stochastic fluctuations, which may be relevant in systems of nano- or micro-scale particles where rolling is an approximation for strong static friction. We consider the simplest possible…
We examine fluctuation-induced (pseudo-Casimir) interactions in nematic liquid-crystalline films confined between two surfaces, where one of the surfaces imposes a strong homeotropic anchoring (ensuring a uniform mean director profile),…
This is the first paper in a series where we study collisions of nucleated bubbles taking into account the effects of small initial (quantum) fluctuations in a fully 3+1-dimensional setting. In this paper, we consider the evolution of…
We study numerically and analytically a model of self-propelled polar disks on a substrate in two dimensions. The particles interact via isotropic repulsive forces and are subject to rotational noise, but there is no aligning interaction.…