Related papers: Precursor phenomena in frustrated systems
We consider magnetic friction between two systems of $q$-state Potts spins which are moving along their boundaries with a relative constant velocity $v$. Due to the interaction between the surface spins there is a permanent energy flow and…
Spin glasses are systems whose magnetic moments freeze at low temperature into random orientations without long-range order. It is generally accepted that both frustration and disorder are essential ingredients in all spin glasses, so it…
The glass transition is described in terms of thermally activated local structural rearrangements, the secondary relaxations of the glass phase. The interaction between these secondary relaxations leads to a much faster and much more…
The physics of the spin glass (SG) state, with magnetic moments (spins) frozen in random orientations, is one of the most intriguing problems in condensed matter physics. While most theoretical studies have focused on the Edwards-Anderson…
A frustrated system is one whose symmetry precludes the possibility that every pairwise interaction (``bond'') in the system can be satisfied at the same time. Such systems are common in all areas of physical and biological science. In the…
Nonlinear dynamical systems may be exposed to tipping points, critical thresholds at which small changes in the external inputs or in the systems parameters abruptly shift the system to an alternative state with a contrasting dynamical…
Slow dynamics in glassy systems is often interpreted as due to thermally activated events between "metastable" states. This emphasizes the role of nonperturbative fluctuations, which is especially dramatic when these fluctuations destroy a…
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 describe the contact network of granular packings by a frustrated lattice gas that contains steric frustration as essential ingredient. Two transitions are identified, a spin glass transition at the onset of Reynolds dilatancy and at…
In studies of the QCD deconfining phase transition or crossover by means of heavy ion experiments, one ought to be concerned about non-equilibrium effects due to heating and cooling of the system. Motivated by this, we look at hysteresis…
We numerically study a nondisordered lattice spin system with a first order liquid-crystal transition, as a model for supercooled liquids and glasses. Below the melting temperature the system can be kept in the metastable liquid phase, and…
Glassy systems are disordered systems characterized by extremely slow dynamics. Examples are supercooled liquids, whose dynamics slow down under cooling. The specific pattern of slowing-down depends on the material considered. This…
The emergence of collective oscillations and synchronization is a widespread phenomenon in complex systems. While widely studied in dynamical systems theory, this phenomenon is not well understood in the context of out-of-equilibrium phase…
Numerical simulations by Tanaka and coworkers indicate that glass forming systems of moderately polydisperse hard-core particles, in both two and three dimensions, exhibit diverging correlation lengths. These correlations are described by…
Fluctuating pairwise interactions are understood to drive fluid-like states in dense biological systems. These states find a broad range of functionalities, such as directing growth during morphogenesis and forming aggregates with…
Aspects of the dynamical glass transition are considered within a mean field spin glass model. At the dynamical transition the the system condenses in a state of lower entropy. The difference, the information entropy or complexity, is…
To examine the properties of the frustrated XY model at an incommensurate field we have examined a sequence of magnetic filling factors f which approach the irrational value of one minus the golden mean. At all f studied, the system…
We study the emergence of glassy states after a sudden cooling in lattice models with short range interactions and without any a priori quenched disorder. The glassy state emerges whenever the equilibrium model possesses a sufficient number…
We study the vortex glass transition in disordered high temperature superconductors using Monte Carlo simulations. We use a random pinning model with strong point-correlated quenched disorder, a net applied magnetic field, longrange vortex…
The steep increase of the relaxation time of glass forming liquids upon cooling is traditionally ascribed to an impending entropy crisis: since the system has "nowhere to go", dynamics must come to a halt. This classic argument, due to Adam…