Statistical physics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how order emerges in active matter may facilitate macroscopic control of microscopic objects. Here, Williams et al. show how to control the transport of passive microscopic particles in presence of motile algae in conjunction with boundary-induced accumulation of microswimmers.

    • Stephen Williams
    • , Raphaël Jeanneret
    •  & Marco Polin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emergence of correlated and self-organized linear structures, known as force chains, is relevant for granular materials, foams, emulsions, and extreme active matter. The authors develop a machine learning-based approach to predict force chain formation in jammed disordered solids under deformation.

    • Rituparno Mandal
    • , Corneel Casert
    •  & Peter Sollich

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While topology is crucial in complex systems, stochastic thermodynamics uncovers universal constraints for non-equilibrium fluctuations. The authors combine these two areas and formulate a fluctuation theorem for the heat dissipated along closed loops in vortex force fields, which is found to be topologically protected.

    • Benoît Mahault
    • , Evelyn Tang
    •  & Ramin Golestanian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electric circuits represent a versatile platform for simulations of exotic phenomena that are difficult to realize is condensed matter systems. Here the authors simulate particle statistics-dependent Bloch oscillations with electric circuits and observe features predicted for a model of anyons on a 1D lattice.

    • Weixuan Zhang
    • , Hao Yuan
    •  & Xiangdong Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “A hallmark of living systems is their homochirality, the selection of specific mirror symmetry in their molecules. Here, the authors show that chiral symmetry can be spontaneously broken in complex, random chemical systems via exploitation of environmental energy sources – a possible mechanism for the emergence of homochirality in life.”

    • William D. Piñeros
    •  & Tsvi Tlusty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reconfigurability at the micro-scale is rare. Here, authors present a versatile magnetic microrobot collective that reconfigures on-demand among miscellaneous behaviors that allow for exploration, navigation, and interaction with diverse environments.

    • Gaurav Gardi
    • , Steven Ceron
    •  & Metin Sitti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cellular adhesions have the remarkable property that they adapt their stability to the applied mechanical load. Here, authors describe a generic physical mechanism that explains self-stabilization of idealized adhesion systems under shear.

    • Andrea Braeutigam
    • , Ahmet Nihat Simsek
    •  & Benedikt Sabass

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dynamic structure of supramolecular polymers is challenging to determine both in experiments and in simulations. Here the authors use coarse-grained molecular models to provide a comprehensive analysis of the molecular communication in these complex molecular systems.

    • Martina Crippa
    • , Claudio Perego
    •  & Giovanni M. Pavan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding of the collective motion seen in biological systems is crucial for development of autonomous robots and swarm computing. The authors introduce an experimental platform with liquid crystal driven by external electric field, that mimics the collective motion of living systems.

    • Yuan Shen
    •  & Ingo Dierking

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most plasmas are created in a nonequilibrium state and understanding the non-trivial pathway to equilibrium is critical for predicting their time-evolving properties. Here the authors discuss the ion-ion temperature relaxation in a dual-species ultracold neutral plasma.

    • R. Tucker Sprenkle
    • , L. G. Silvestri
    •  & S. D. Bergeson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Generative models have become increasingly popular in protein design, yet rigorous metrics that allow the comparison of these models are lacking. Here, the authors propose a set of such metrics and use them to compare three popular models.

    • Francisco McGee
    • , Sandro Hauri
    •  & Allan Haldane

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gradient-based and non-gradient-based methods for training neural networks are usually considered to be fundamentally different. The authors derive, and illustrate numerically, an analytic equivalence between the dynamics of neural network training under conditioned stochastic mutations, and under gradient descent.

    • Stephen Whitelam
    • , Viktor Selin
    •  & Isaac Tamblyn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deviations from Brownian motion leading to anomalous diffusion are ubiquitously found in transport dynamics but often difficult to characterize. Here the authors compare approaches for single trajectory analysis through an open competition, showing that machine learning methods outperform classical approaches.

    • Gorka Muñoz-Gil
    • , Giovanni Volpe
    •  & Carlo Manzo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experimental data obtained in single-particle tracking experiments are challenging to interpret. The authors propose an approach for determining the dynamics of the stochastic motion of molecules based on the power spectrum, relevant to various non-stationary scale-free random walks.

    • Zachary R. Fox
    • , Eli Barkai
    •  & Diego Krapf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The question whether a given isolated quantum many-body system would thermalize has currently no general answer. Here, Shiraishi and Matsumoto demonstrate the computational universality of thermalization phenomena already for simplified 1D systems, thus proving that the thermalization problem is undecidable.

    • Naoto Shiraishi
    •  & Keiji Matsumoto

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Micro scale heat engines may be subjected to quite intriguing scenarios. Roy et al superimpose artificial random kicks on an optically trapped colloid, emulating a memoryless non-gaussian reservoir that markedly alters the conditions under which the engine performs at optimum efficiency.

    • Niloyendu Roy
    • , Nathan Leroux
    •  & Rajesh Ganapathy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It was predicted that complex thermalizing behaviour can arise in many-body systems in the absence of disorder. Here, the authors observe non-ergodic dynamics in a tilted optical lattice that is distinct from previously studied regimes, and propose a microscopic mechanism that is due to emergent kinetic constrains.

    • Sebastian Scherg
    • , Thomas Kohlert
    •  & Monika Aidelsburger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ito and co-workers unravel how bacteria such as Salmonella switch gears with their flagellar driving machinery. External load triggers the dynamic remodeling of the molecular complex sustaining the torque, and the number of stator units is adapted in a non-trivial, cooperative manner.

    • Kenta I. Ito
    • , Shuichi Nakamura
    •  & Shoichi Toyabe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Furanose species have a key role in the chemistry of life despite their instability over pyranose ones. The authors, through NMR characterization of the anomeric ratios at equilibrium and a non-equilibrium theoretical treatment, show that a steady temperature gradient, at temperatures relevant to the early Earth, favors furanose over pyranose isomers.

    • Avinash Vicholous Dass
    • , Thomas Georgelin
    •  & Francesco Piazza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The famous Kramers turnover describes the extent of friction at which the transition rate of a small particle trapped in a bistable potential becomes a maximum. Militaru et al. present a version of this phenomenon pertaining to active colloids driven by non-conservative forces.

    • A. Militaru
    • , M. Innerbichler
    •  & C. Dellago

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The so-called twist-bend and splay-bend nematic liquid crystal phases are important concepts for studying bent-core mesogens. Chiappini et al. use a theory/simulation approach to suggest that the transition proceed via a twist-splay-bend phase which may be obscured by density modulations.

    • Massimiliano Chiappini
    •  & Marjolein Dijkstra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transmission by pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic viral carriers makes intervention and containment of the COVID-19 extremely challenging. Here, the authors construct an epidemiological model that focuses on transmission around the symptom onset, exploring specific transmission control measures.

    • Liang Tian
    • , Xuefei Li
    •  & Lei-Han Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is generally believed that most eigenstates of quantum chaotic models are ergodic. In this work, the authors disprove this by showing that all eigenstates of the Dicke model in the chaotic regime are scarred, and that ergodicity is an ensemble property, achievable only in the temporal average.

    • Saúl Pilatowsky-Cameo
    • , David Villaseñor
    •  & Jorge G. Hirsch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The degree of irreversibility of a dynamical system is commonly characterized by the total rate of entropy production. Seara et al. introduce a measure that quantifies irreversibility from data in broad classes of spatiotemporal non-equilibrium systems.

    • Daniel S. Seara
    • , Benjamin B. Machta
    •  & Michael P. Murrell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Absent a drug or vaccine, containing epidemic outbreaks is achieved by means of mobility restrictions and lock-downs. Here, the authors propose an alternating quarantine strategy, in which half of the population remains under lockdown while the other half continues to be active, resulting in a dramatic reduction in transmission.

    • Dror Meidan
    • , Nava Schulmann
    •  & Baruch Barzel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current inequality and market consumption modelling appears to be subjective. Here the authors combined all three axes of poverty modelling - Engel-Krishnakumar’s microeconomics, Aoki-Chattopadhyay’s mathematical precept and found that multivariate construction is a key component of economic data analysis, implying all modes of income and expenditure need to be considered to arrive at a proper weighted prediction of poverty.

    • Amit K. Chattopadhyay
    • , T. Krishna Kumar
    •  & Iain Rice

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ferroelectric domain wall profiles can be modeled by phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory, with different candidate models and parameters. Here, the authors solve the problem of model selection by developing a Bayesian inference framework allowing for uncertainty quantification and apply it to atomically resolved images of walls. This analysis can also predict the level of microscope performance needed to detect specific physical phenomena.

    • Christopher T. Nelson
    • , Rama K. Vasudevan
    •  & Sergei V. Kalinin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Topological phenomena appear in non-Hermitian systems but the fundamental principles of the edge modes remain less understood. Here, Sone et al. report robust gapless edge modes due to topological structure around an exceptional point rather than bulk-edge correspondence.

    • Kazuki Sone
    • , Yuto Ashida
    •  & Takahiro Sagawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin of dynamical slowdown in disordered materials remains elusive, especially in the absence of obvious structural changes. Boattini et al. use unsupervised machine learning to reveal correlations between structural and dynamical heterogeneity in supercooled liquids.

    • Emanuele Boattini
    • , Susana Marín-Aguilar
    •  & Laura Filion

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The static and dynamic behavior of condensed phases residing on curved surfaces can be fundamentally different from their counterparts in Euclidean space. Singh et al. test several competing glass theories on colloidal liquids confined to the surface of a sphere and show they behave like 3D bulk liquids.

    • Navneet Singh
    • , A. K. Sood
    •  & Rajesh Ganapathy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dynamic pricing schemes are increasingly employed in on-demand mobility. Here the authors show that ride-hailing services across the globe exhibit anomalous price surges induced by collective action of drivers, uncovered from price time-series at 137 locations, and explain under which conditions they emerge.

    • Malte Schröder
    • , David-Maximilian Storch
    •  & Marc Timme

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Brownian motion places the ultimate limit on microorganisms’ ability to navigate. Thornton et al. show that Haloarchaea have a strategy of slow swimming and infrequent reorientation that exploits the randomising nature of Brownian motion to achieve optimal chemotaxis at the thermodynamic limit.

    • Katie L. Thornton
    • , Jaimi K. Butler
    •  & Laurence G. Wilson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How UHI intensity responds to variations of urban structure is unclear. Here the authors proposed a reduced form approach that is able to estimate UHI intensities based only on the number and location of urban sites as well as their distance.

    • Yunfei Li
    • , Sebastian Schubert
    •  & Diego Rybski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While active matter exhibits unusual dynamics at low density, high density behavior has not been explored. Mandal et al. show that extreme dense active matter, shows a rich spectrum of behaviour from intermittent plastic bursts and turbulence, to glassy states and jamming in the limit of infinite persistence time.

    • Rituparno Mandal
    • , Pranab Jyoti Bhuyan
    •  & Madan Rao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding failure propagation dynamics in complex networks with recovery processes is vital to realizing networks that are resistant to large scale failures. Here, the authors report a model for general failure propagation dynamics in complex networks with non-Markovian recovery processes.

    • Zhao-Hua Lin
    • , Mi Feng
    •  & Ying-Cheng Lai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans can easily uncover abstract associations. Here, the authors propose that higher-order associations arise from natural errors in learning and memory. They suggest that mental errors influence the humans’ representation of the world in significant and predictable ways.

    • Christopher W. Lynn
    • , Ari E. Kahn
    •  & Danielle S. Bassett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predicting and controlling traffic congestion propagation is an ongoing challenge in most urban settings. Here, Seberi et al. apply a contagion model describing epidemic spread in population to model traffic jams, and verify its validity using large-scale data from six different cities around the world.

    • Meead Saberi
    • , Homayoun Hamedmoghadam
    •  & Marta C. González

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nature of the defects in amorphous materials, analogous to vacancies and dislocations in crystals, remains a matter of debate. Scalliet et al. show that localized and extended defects coexist in a wide range of conditions, yet are associated with distinct energy scales in a prototypical glass model.

    • Camille Scalliet
    • , Ludovic Berthier
    •  & Francesco Zamponi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There are a number of non-trivial integrable models in one-dimension, making them an attractive starting point for studying quantum dynamics. Biella et al. study transport between two semi-infinite solvable models and show that a slowly-relaxing region forms around the integrability-breaking junction.

    • Alberto Biella
    • , Mario Collura
    •  & Leonardo Mazza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Particles in turbulence, as encountered in the atmosphere or the oceans, experience strongly varying local flow conditions over time. Bentkamp et al. show that this statistical complexity can be broken down into simpler parts, allowing for insights into the space-time structure of turbulent flows.

    • Lukas Bentkamp
    • , Cristian C. Lalescu
    •  & Michael Wilczek

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Non-equilibrium systems with hidden states are relevant for biological systems such as molecular motors. Here the authors introduce a method for quantifying irreversibility in such a system by exploiting the fluctuations in the waiting times of time series data.

    • Ignacio A. Martínez
    • , Gili Bisker
    •  & Juan M. R. Parrondo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How does a scientist’s tendency to explore a variety of topics affect their career? Here, the authors analyze scientific publication data to understand how often scientists switch topics, how topic switching has changed over time, and how it relates to research productivity.

    • An Zeng
    • , Zhesi Shen
    •  & Shlomo Havlin

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