Related papers: Application of Statistical Physics to Politics

Generalized statistical models of voids and hierarchical structure in cosmology are developed. The often quoted negative binomial model and frequently used thermodynamic model are shown to be special cases of a more general distribution…

We explore the applicability of the exact renormalization group to the study of tunnelling phenomena. We investigate quantum-mechanical systems whose energy eigenstates are affected significantly by tunnelling through a barrier in the…

Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of an essential hallmark of a vibrant…

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 experimentally study voter turnout in two-tier elections when the electorate consists of multiple groups, such as states. Votes are aggregated within the groups by the winner-take-all rule or the proportional rule, and the group-level…

In the context of the Renormalization Group (RG) for gravity I discuss the role of field rescalings and their relation to choices of units. I concentrate on a simple Higgs model coupled to gravity, where natural choices of units can be…

The cosmological many-body problem is effectively an infinite system of gravitationally interacting masses in an expanding universe. Despite the interactions' long-range nature, an analytical theory of statistical mechanics describes the…

The capabilities of a new approach towards the foundations of Statistical Mechanics are explored. The approach is genuine quantum in the sense that statistical behavior is a consequence of objective quantum uncertainties due to entanglement…

Time evolution operator in quantum mechanics can be changed into a statistical operator by a Wick rotation. This strict relation between statistical mechanics and quantum evolution can reveal deep results when the thermodynamic limit is…

Superstatistics is a widely employed tool of non-equilibrium statistical physics which plays an important role in analysis of hierarchical complex dynamical systems. Yet, its "canonical" formulation in terms of a single nuisance parameter…

We consider a system in which a group of agents represented by the vertices of a graph synchronously update their opinion based on that of their neighbours. If each agent adopts a positive opinion if and only if that opinion is sufficiently…

Metric distortion in social choice is a framework for evaluating how well voting rules minimize social cost when both voters and candidates exist in a shared metric space, with a voter's cost defined by their distance to a candidate. Voters…

The majority vote model is one of the simplest opinion systems yielding distinct phase transitions and has garnered significant interest in recent years. However, its original formulation is not, in general, thermodynamically consistent,…

In grand unified theories with large numbers of fields, renormalization effects significantly modify the scale at which quantum gravity becomes strong. This in turn can modify the boundary conditions for coupling constant unification, if…

Using the machinery of smooth scaling and coarse-graining of observables, developed recently in the context of so-called fluctuation operators (originally developed by Verbeure et al), we extend this approach to a rigorous renormalisation…

Recently, a geometric embedding of the classical space and classical phase space of an n-particle system into the space of states of the system was constructed and shown to be physically meaningful. Namely, the Newtonian dynamics of the…

The project concerns the interplay among quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, in isolated quantum systems. The underlying goal is to improve our understanding of the concept of thermal equilibrium in quantum systems.…

We study a two-alternative voting game where voters' preferences depend on an unobservable world state and each voter receives a private signal correlated to the true world state. We consider the collective decision when voters can…

Democratic societies are built around the principle of free and fair elections, that each citizen's vote should count equal. National elections can be regarded as large-scale social experiments, where people are grouped into usually large…

The dynamics of random transitive delegations on a graph are of particular interest when viewed through the lens of an emerging voting paradigm, liquid democracy. This paradigm allows voters to choose between directly voting and…