Statistical physics, thermodynamics and nonlinear dynamics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The spread of instabilities in financial systems, similarly to ecosystems, is influenced by topological features of the underlying network structures. Here the authors show, independently of specific financial models, that market integration and diversification can drive the system towards instability.

    • Marco Bardoscia
    • , Stefano Battiston
    •  & Guido Caldarelli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proximity to criticality can be advantageous under changing conditions, but it also entails reduced robustness. Here, the authors analyse fight sizes in a macaque society and find not only that it sits near criticality, but also that the distance from the critical point is tunable through adjustment of individual behaviour and social conflict management.

    • Bryan C. Daniels
    • , David C. Krakauer
    •  & Jessica C. Flack

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An articulation point in a network is a node whose removal disconnects the network. Here the authors develop analytical tools to study key issues pertinent to articulation points, such as the expected number of them and the network vulnerability against their removal, in arbitrary complex networks.

    • Liang Tian
    • , Amir Bashan
    •  & Yang-Yu Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Telephone cord blisters constitute a well-known example of patterns generated following buckling in thin films. Here the authors develop an analytical approach that can model the sectional height profiles along the blisters that they measure experimentally and simulate numerically.

    • Yong Ni
    • , Senjiang Yu
    •  & Linghui He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex networks have been conjectured to be hidden in metric spaces, which offer geometric interpretation of networks’ topologies. Here the authors extend this concept to weighted networks, providing empirical evidence on the metric natures of weights, which are shown to be reproducible by a gravity model.

    • Antoine Allard
    • , M. Ángeles Serrano
    •  & Marián Boguñá

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Energy dissipation characterizes the states far from equilibrium, whilst how it affects the local organization remains elusive. Here, Muruganet al. show that the non-equilibrium systems exhibit topologically protected boundary modes that have been known in electronic and mechanical systems.

    • Arvind Murugan
    •  & Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identifying and quantifying dissimilarities among graphs is a problem of practical importance, but current approaches are either limited or computationally demanding. Here, the authors propose an efficiently computable measure for network comparison that can identify structural topological differences.

    • Tiago A. Schieber
    • , Laura Carpi
    •  & Martín G. Ravetti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low thermal conductivities in nanomeshes have been attributed to both wave-like and particle-like behaviour of phonons. Here, the authors use periodicity-controlled silicon nanomeshes to show that the particle backscattering effect dominates for periodicities above 100 nm and temperatures above 14 K.

    • Jaeho Lee
    • , Woochul Lee
    •  & Peidong Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Frustration in lattices of interacting spins can lead to rich and exotic physics, such as fractionalized excitations and emergent order. Here, the authors demonstrate a low-temperature transition from a disordered spin-ice-like phase to an emergent charge ordered phase in the bulk kagome Ising magnet Dy3Mg2Sb3O14.

    • Joseph A. M. Paddison
    • , Harapan S. Ong
    •  & S. E. Dutton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polymorph selection by synthesis conditions is common, important and mechanistically undercharacterized. Here authors show viaab initio calculations that surface energy effects on nucleation rate can explain how solution pH selects dominant forms of FeS2during hydrothermal synthesis.

    • Daniil A. Kitchaev
    •  & Gerbrand Ceder

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been a challenge to characterize microscopic origins of friction at high velocities. Here authors extend atomic force microscopy to develop a dynamic technique combining force sensitivity and spatial resolution and able to probe, at each image pixel, frictional forces at velocities up to several cm per second.

    • Per-Anders Thorén
    • , Astrid S. de Wijn
    •  & David B. Haviland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whole-brain networks of long-range neuronal pathways are characterized by interdependencies between structural features. Here the author shows that module hierarchy and rich club features in these networks are structural byproducts (spandrels) of module and hub constraints, but not of wiring-cost constraints.

    • Mikail Rubinov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermodynamic observables develop power laws and singularities when approaching the Curie point of a ferromagnetic phase transition. Here, Saratz et al. demonstrate that topological excitations (that is, magnetic domains in Fe/Cu(100) films that even persist above the Curie point) remove those singularities compatibly with an avoided critical point.

    • N. Saratz
    • , D. A. Zanin
    •  & A. Vindigni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Describing thermodynamic processes, fluctuations of work are typically not considered bounded. Here the authors show that in some processes they diverge, making the processes unphysical, and construct a framework to quantify work extraction and work of formation of arbitrary quantum states with bounded fluctuations.

    • Jonathan G. Richens
    •  & Lluis Masanes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The collective motion of microswimmers is determined by not only their direct interaction, but also the hydrodynamics forces mediated by the surrounding flow field. Here, the authors detail in simulation the spontaneous assembly and disassembly of magnetic microswimmers into various structures.

    • Francisca Guzmán-Lastra
    • , Andreas Kaiser
    •  & Hartmut Löwen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In active matter, chemical energy is transformed into mechanical motion; theoretical descriptions of nematic liquids are useful in understanding such phenomena. Here, Zhang et al. model the dynamics of active nematic liquid crystals confined onto a spherical shell in systems that mimic cell motion.

    • Rui Zhang
    • , Ye Zhou
    •  & Juan J. de Pablo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Network science and game theory have been traditionally combined to analyse interactions between nodes of a network. Here, the authors model competition for importance among networks themselves, and reveal dominance of the underdogs in the fate of networks-of-networks.

    • Jaime Iranzo
    • , Javier M. Buldú
    •  & Jacobo Aguirre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The suppression of crystallization due to the appearance of structures with fivefold symmetry is widely adopted, but its kinetic and thermodynamic origin remains elusive. Taffs et al.show that fivefold symmetry substantially slows down the nucleation rate but not the crystal growth rate as expected.

    • Jade Taffs
    •  & C. Patrick Royall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metastable phases are usually formed through nucleation, upon overcoming an energy barrier. Here, Alert et al. theoretically predict and experimentally verify the unexpected formation of a metastable phase by spinodal decomposition through direct phase separation from an unstable phase.

    • Ricard Alert
    • , Pietro Tierno
    •  & Jaume Casademunt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The K-satisfability problem is a combinatorial discrete optimization problem, which for K=3 is NP-complete, and whose random formulation is of interest for understanding computational complexity. Here, the authors introduce the backtracking survey propagation algorithm for studying it for K=3 and K=4.

    • Raffaele Marino
    • , Giorgio Parisi
    •  & Federico Ricci-Tersenghi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The capability to move towards or away from light sources, namely phototaxis, is an essential feature of many microorganisms like bacteria or motile cells. Lozano et al. show an artificial phototaxis system that enables autonomous navigation of colloidal Janus spheres in a laser-generated light landscape.

    • Celia Lozano
    • , Borge ten Hagen
    •  & Clemens Bechinger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In thermodynamics, thermal properties of systems are obtained from averaging procedures which smooth out local details. Here, the authors introduce the concept of local quantum thermal susceptibility, a measure for the best achievable accuracy of estimation of temperature via local measurements.

    • Antonella De Pasquale
    • , Davide Rossini
    •  & Vittorio Giovannetti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many human mobility studies have shown empirically long-tailed distance distributions, which are usually associated to Lévy flights. Here, the authors show that the behavior of private vehicles could be misinterpreted as Lévy flights but is fully captured by a class of accelerated random walks.

    • Riccardo Gallotti
    • , Armando Bazzani
    •  & Marc Barthelemy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gibbs' phase rule states that the maximum number of coexisting phases in a one-component system, and in absence of external fields, is three. Here, the authors show that directly controlling the Hamiltonian allows the extension of this rule to four phases.

    • Kenji Akahane
    • , John Russo
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Melting is a classic first-order phase transition, but an accurate thermodynamic description is still lacking. Here, Pedersen et al. develop a theory, validated by simulations of the Lennard-Jones system, for the melting thermodynamics applicable to all systems characterized by hidden scale invariance.

    • Ulf R. Pedersen
    • , Lorenzo Costigliola
    •  & Jeppe C. Dyre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The discovery that the entropy of black holes is given by their horizon area inspired the holographic principle and led to gauge-gravity duality. Here, the author shows that all Rényi entropies satisfy a similar area law in holographic theories and are given by the areas of dual cosmic branes.

    • Xi Dong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strings or long chains are prone to knotting. Here, the authors demonstrate that the vortex structure of quantum wavefunctions, such as that in a simple harmonic oscillator, can also contain knots, whose topological complexity can be a descriptor of the spatial order of the system.

    • Alexander J. Taylor
    •  & Mark R. Dennis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In general, heating increases disorder and leads to the loss of magnetism in condensed matter. Here, the authors demonstrate that a normal metal can be magnetized by applying a temperature gradient during non-uniform heating when attached to a magnetic insulator.

    • Dazhi Hou
    • , Zhiyong Qiu
    •  & E. Saitoh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A central concept in thermodynamics is the thermal state, which is the one towards which the system relaxes. Here, the authors derive the same state, through three different approaches, in the case of a quantum system whose conserved quantities correspond to operators that do not commute with one another.

    • Nicole Yunger Halpern
    • , Philippe Faist
    •  & Andreas Winter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The second law of thermodynamics constrains how much of a conserved quantity, such as energy, can be extracted from a system in the form of work. Here, the authors generalize this law to quantum systems whose conserved quantities need not commute, showing that it is their combination to be constrained.

    • Yelena Guryanova
    • , Sandu Popescu
    •  & Paul Skrzypczyk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The second law of thermodynamics says that the efficiency of a heat engine is limited by the Carnot efficiency. Here, the authors use finite-size-scaling theory to investigate whether this ultimate limit can be achieved at finite power using quantum Otto engines.

    • Michele Campisi
    •  & Rosario Fazio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase transitions are often revealed by a discontinuous behaviour of thermodynamic quantities. Here, the authors study the thermodynamic behaviour of a trapped 2D photon gas, revealing critical behaviour at the phase transition through a cusp singularity of the specific heat.

    • Tobias Damm
    • , Julian Schmitt
    •  & Jan Klaers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flexible information routing underlies the function of many biological and artificial networks. Here, the authors present a theoretical framework that shows how information can be flexibly routed across networks using collective reference dynamics and how local changes may induce remote rerouting.

    • Christoph Kirst
    • , Marc Timme
    •  & Demian Battaglia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relaxation of closed macroscopic systems towards thermal equilibrium is an ubiquitous experimental fact, but very difficult to characterize theoretically. Here, the author establishes a quantitative description of such relaxation under arbitrary typical conditions, capturing well experimental data.

    • Peter Reimann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The understanding of complex electronic correlation and non-equilibrium atomic interactions is a grand challenge. Here, the authors show that chemical disorder in single-phase concentrated solid solution alloys can lead to reduction in electron mean free path and electrical and thermal conductivity.

    • Yanwen Zhang
    • , G. Malcolm Stocks
    •  & William J. Weber

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The coupling between layers plays an important role in the properties of stacked two-dimensional materials. Here, the authors show that Coulomb interactions between electrons in different layers of graphene induce thermal transport even though all electronic states are confined to individual layers.

    • Momchil T. Mihnev
    • , John R. Tolsma
    •  & Theodore B. Norris

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how to control complex networks can be useful to steer interconnected systems towards a desired state. Here, the authors introduce the concept of network permeability, a unified metric of the propensity of a network to be controllable taking into account physical and economic constrains.

    • Francesco Lo Iudice
    • , Franco Garofalo
    •  & Francesco Sorrentino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cooling atoms and ions to the quantum ground state is generally achieved by resonantly coupling their mechanical motion to an electromagnetic wave. Here the authors report self-induced cooling based on sub-nanometre confinement with an electron beam, rather than an electromagnetic resonance.

    • A. Niguès
    • , A. Siria
    •  & P. Verlot

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nonlinear magnetization dynamics underlie the operation of important spintronic devices. Here, the authors study NiFe thin films via X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, to develop a model for nonlinear spin-wave excitation by ferromagnetic resonance under small applied magnetic fields.

    • Hans G. Bauer
    • , Peter Majchrak
    •  & Georg Woltersdorf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The interplay between magnetic and superconducting phases is important to understand the physics of iron-based superconductivity. Here, the authors use thermodynamic measurements on Ba1−xKxFe2As2 single crystals to provide details of its phase diagram and the re-entrance of a C2spin-density-wave phase.

    • A. E. Böhmer
    • , F. Hardy
    •  & C. Meingast

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A linear energy–momentum relation of graphene results in a high direct-current electron mobility, but this is not necessarily true at terahertz frequencies. Here, the authors show that its ultrafast conductivity is dependent on a highly nonlinear interplay between heating and cooling of the electron gas.

    • Zoltán Mics
    • , Klaas-Jan Tielrooij
    •  & Dmitry Turchinovich

  • Article |

    Electrons trapped to a two-dimensional plane can exhibit many exotic properties. Here, the authors use a technique that measures entropy per electron to explore the evolution of such a system from the Fermi liquid regime to a previously unexplored regime of a strongly correlated charged plasma.

    • A. Y. Kuntsevich
    • , Y. V. Tupikov
    •  & I. S. Burmistrov

  • Article |

    Structural patterns such as communities are used to understand the architecture of complex networks, but this is typically obtained for a purely static case. Here the authors introduce a generalized formalism that includes the statistical properties of the event timings.

    • Jean-Charles Delvenne
    • , Renaud Lambiotte
    •  & Luis E. C. Rocha

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cryptands and related molecules are macrocyclic polyethers capable of strongly binding cations. Here, the authors use orthoester exchange for the dynamic one-pot synthesis of crypates, which can bind cations and, given their constitutionally dynamic nature, can also be decomposed to release their guest.

    • René-Chris Brachvogel
    • , Frank Hampel
    •  & Max von Delius

  • Article |

    In statistical physics, the observable macroscopic behaviour of a system is obtained from a microscopic model of its components. Here, the authors extend this approach to systems with no known microscopic dynamics, by looking at the system’s response to external perturbations.

    • Baruch Barzel
    • , Yang-Yu Liu
    •  & Albert-László Barabási

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The work fluctuations of systems driven out of equilibrium are governed by the same large-deviation theory as wavefunction amplitudes close to the Anderson localization transition. Exploiting this analogy, the authors generalize the Jarzynski equality, verifying their relation on a single-electron box.

    • I.M. Khaymovich
    • , J.V. Koski
    •  & J.P. Pekola

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In high entropy alloys a mix of a large number of five or more principal atomic elements is used to tune the properties. Here, the authors present a solution to the problem of predicting the properties of the huge number of potential alloys by developing an efficient screening approach based on automated calculations.

    • O.N. Senkov
    • , J.D. Miller
    •  & C. Woodward

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