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We present a microscopic picture rationalizing the surprisingly steep decrease of the band gap with temperature in insulators, crystalline or otherwise. The gap narrowing largely results from fluctuations of long-wavelength optical…
An effective theory is constructed for analyzing a generic phase transition between the quantum spin Hall and the insulator phases. Occurrence of degeneracies due to closing of the gap at the transition are carefully elucidated. For systems…
In the quantum rotor model with random exchange interactions having a non-zero mean, three phases, a 1) phase (Bose) glass, 2) superfluid, and 3) Mott insulator, meet at a bi-critical point. We demonstrate that proximity to the bi-critical…
The two-dimensional XY gauge glass, which describes disordered superconducting grains in strong magnetic fields, is investigated, with regard to the possibility of a glass transition. We compute the glass susceptibility and the correlation…
In the present study, we demonstrate a vacuum thermal switch based on near-field thermal radiation between phase transition materials, i.e., vanadium dioxide (VO2), whose phase changes from insulator to metal at 341 K. Similar modulation…
The state of earth's climate is constrained by well-known physical principles such as energy balance and the conservation of energy. Increased greenhouse gas concentrations affect the atmospheric optical depth, and physical consistency…
Effective management of cooling tower systems requires thorough disinfection. While traditional chemical water treatment methods are currently the most prominent strategy, they are costly and yield limited results when relied upon as the…
The rising availability of large volume data, along with increasing computing power, has enabled a wide application of statistical Machine Learning (ML) algorithms in the domains of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT) and…
It has recently been shown that thermal active glasses can display physical aging behavior comparable to that of passive glasses, although there are some notable distinctions due to the intrinsic non-equilibrium nature of active matter. The…
Using the fluctuational electrodynamics and nonequilibrium Green's function methods, we demonstrate the existence of a current-induced heat transfer in double-layer graphene even when the temperatures of the two sheets are the same. The…
The cover glass in a silicon solar panel accounts for about 2/3 of the device's weight. Recycling these devices at their end-of-life is fundamental to reducing the industry's environmental impact. Here we investigate the recovery of these…
We show numerically that a three-dimensional model for structural glass displays aging, rejuvenation and memory effects when submitted to a temperature cycle. These effects indicate that the free energy landscape of structural glasses may…
The integration of LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) technology with both active and passive sensors presents a transformative opportunity for the development of smart home systems. This paper explores how active sensors, such as…
Searching for the ideal glass transition, we exploit the ability of glassy polymer films to explore low energy states in remarkably short time scales. We use 30 nm thick polystyrene (PS) films, which in the supercooled state basically…
Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP) systems are heating and cooling systems that use the ground as the temperature exchange medium. GHP systems are becoming more and more popular in recent years due to their high efficiency. Conventional control…
An old conceptual physics-based back-of-the-envelope model for greenhouse effect is revisited and validated against state-of-the-art reanalyses. Untraditional diagnostics show a physically consistent picture, for which the state of earth's…
Indoor air quality (IAQ) forecasting plays a critical role in safeguarding occupant health, ensuring thermal comfort, and supporting intelligent building control. However, predicting future concentrations of key pollutants such as carbon…
The East model has a dynamical phase transition between an active (fluid) and inactive (glass) state. We show that this phase transition generalizes to "softened" systems where constraint violations are allowed with small but finite…
Radiative cooling is a passive cooling strategy with zero consumption of electricity. Although this technology can work well during optimal atmospheric conditions at nighttime, it is essential to achieve efficient radiative cooling during…
Using mean-field approximations, this paper identifies a phase transition in a three-dimensional Electron Glass lattice model. The density of states of the eigenvalue distribution of the inverse susceptibility matrix is used to identify the…