Related papers: Thermodynamic behavior of a phase transition in a …
Phase transitions occur when a macroscopic number of local degrees of freedom coherently change their behavior. In ground states of quantum many-body systems, phase transitions due to quantum fluctuations are observed as non-analytic…
Here we present a combinatorial decision problem, inspired by the celebrated quiz show called the countdown, that involves the computation of a given target number T from a set of k randomly chosen integers along with a set of arithmetic…
The incredible thermo-mechanical properties of biological materials arise from the microscopic scale due to a complex hierarchical mechanism, regulated by microinstabilities at the molecular level. The description of such complex structures…
Equilibrium phase transitions may be defined as nonanalytic points of thermodynamic functions, e.g., of the canonical free energy. Given a certain physical system, it is of interest to understand which properties of the system account for…
One-dimensional model of a system where first-order phase transition occurs is examined in the present paper. It is shown that basic properties of the phenomenon, such as a well defined temperature of transition, are caused both by…
Phase transitions are fundamental features of statistical physics. While the well-studied continuous phase transitions are known to be controlled by external \textit{macroscopic} changes in the order parameter, the origin of abrupt…
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…
Classical phase transitions, like solid-liquid-gas or order-disorder spin magnetic phases, are all driven by thermal energy fluctuations by varying the temperature. On the other hand, quantum phase transitions happen at absolute zero…
Increasing the number of particles in a system often leads to qualitative changes in its properties, such as breaking of symmetries and the appearance of phase transitions. This renders a macroscopic system fundamentally different from its…
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…
Concepts of everyday use like energy, heat, and temperature have acquired a precise meaning after the development of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics provides the basis for understanding how heat and work are related and with the general…
This paper looks at the early theory of phase transitions. It considers a group of related concepts derived from condensed matter and statistical physics. The key technical ideas here go under the names of "singularity", "order parameter",…
A natural phenomenon occurring in a living system is an outcome of the dynamics of the specific biological network underlying the phenomenon. The collective dynamics have both deterministic and stochastic components. The stochastic nature…
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics has long been an area of substantial interest to ecologists because most fundamental biological processes, such as protein synthesis and respiration, are inherently energy-consuming. Microbial communities are…
The emergence of global order in complex systems with locally interacting components is most striking at criticality, where small changes in control parameters result in a sudden global re-organization. We introduce a measure of…
Fluctuation effects at first order phase transitions driven by changes of other-than-temperature factors like pressure, concentration, or external fields are investigated by perturbation theory. The results for the fluctuation contributions…
By combining different ideas, a general and efficient protocol to deal with discontinuous phase transitions at low temperatures is proposed. For small $T$'s, it is possible to derive a generic analytic expression for appropriate order…
Two mathematical mechanisms, responsible for the generation of a thermodynamic singularity, are individuated. For a class of short-range, confining potentials, a topology change in some family of configuration space submanifolds is the only…
Utilizing ultracold spinor gases as large-scale, many-body quantum simulation platforms, we establish a toolbox for the precise control, characterization, and detection of nonequilibrium dynamics via internal spinor phases. We develop a…
The large-deviation method can be used to study the measurement trajectories of open quantum systems. For optical arrangements this formalism allows to describe the long time properties of the (non-equilibrium) photon counting statistics in…