Statistical physics articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The packing of spheres, disks and other simple shapes into arrays on surfaces is relevant to many problems across the physical sciences. Here the authors study the influence of flexibility and reduced symmetry on the packing of porphyrin nanorings which are deposited from solution onto a graphite surface.

    • Alex Summerfield
    • , Matteo Baldoni
    •  & Peter H. Beton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has been predicted theoretically that the density of self-propelled particles whose speed is spatially dependent should be inversely proportional to the local speed. Here the authors present a systematic check of this prediction in a system of light-activated E. coli.

    • Jochen Arlt
    • , Vincent A. Martinez
    •  & Wilson C. K. Poon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The spread of flood-induced failures in critical infrastructure systems is understudied. Here the authors apply the CaMa-Flood global river flood simulation model to estimate the flood-induced failures and their spread in China and the US and find that the number of flood-induced total failures is in-between that of random and localized damage given the same intensity.

    • Weiping Wang
    • , Saini Yang
    •  & Jianxi Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A good vaccine should direct the immune response to virus regions that are most difficult to escape. Here, Quadeer et al. develop a predictive in-silico evolutionary model for HCV E2 which identifies one such antigenic region and identifies multiple broadly neutralizing human antibodies that appear difficult to escape from.

    • Ahmed A. Quadeer
    • , Raymond H. Y. Louie
    •  & Matthew R. McKay

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supply demand equilibria in modern macroeconomic theories do not hold during recessionary shocks. Here the authors developed a non-equilibrium theory for the susceptibility of industrial sectors to shocks and showed these susceptibilities vary across countries, sectors and time and full economic recovery may take six to ten years.

    • Peter Klimek
    • , Sebastian Poledna
    •  & Stefan Thurner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active fluids consist of self-driven particles which consume energy to drive spontaneous flow. Here the authors present a general theory of two-dimensional chiral active particles which spontaneously rotate and show that they can form a stable, coherently-rotating phase.

    • Ananyo Maitra
    •  & Martin Lenz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    With ever-growing datasets, it is useful to filter out details and keep only the links that carry the relevant structural information. Here the authors generalize the disparity filter by providing a tolerance parameter that can be used to tune how strict the filter is in the selection of edges to preserve.

    • Riccardo Marcaccioli
    •  & Giacomo Livan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The influence of 'fake news’, spread via social media, has been much discussed in the context of the 2016 US presidential election. Here, the authors use data on 30 million tweets to show how content classified as fake news diffused on Twitter before the election.

    • Alexandre Bovet
    •  & Hernán A. Makse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Significant improvements in numerical methods for quantum systems often come from finding new ways of representing quantum states that can be optimized and simulated more efficiently. Here the authors demonstrate a method to calculate exact neural network representations of many-body ground states.

    • Giuseppe Carleo
    • , Yusuke Nomura
    •  & Masatoshi Imada

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active matter describes a group of interacting units showing collective motions by constantly consuming energy from the environment, but inertia has largely been overlooked in this context. Scholz et al. show how important it can be by characterizing the dynamics of self-propelled particles in a model system.

    • Christian Scholz
    • , Soudeh Jahanshahi
    •  & Hartmut Löwen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adapting statistical physics tools to study active systems is challenging due to their non-equilibrium nature. Here the authors use simulations to present a phase diagram of a 2D active system, showing a two-step melting scenario far from equilibrium along with gas-liquid motility-induced phase separation.

    • Juliane U. Klamser
    • , Sebastian C. Kapfer
    •  & Werner Krauth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Diffusing diffusivity” concept has been recently put forward to account for rapid structural rearrangements in soft matter and biological systems. Here the authors propose a general mathematical framework to compute the distribution of first-passage times in a dynamically heterogeneous medium.

    • Yann Lanoiselée
    • , Nicolas Moutal
    •  & Denis S. Grebenkov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spin ice materials are defined by ice rules, local constraints that lead to frustrated interactions and macroscopic numbers of degenerate configurations. Here the authors show that the ice rule in colloidal ice is emergent, limited to certain geometries, and demonstrate how it can break down under changes of the lattice structure.

    • András Libál
    • , Dong Yun Lee
    •  & Cristiano Nisoli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tools from statistical physics can be used to investigate a large variety of fields ranging from economics to biology. Here the authors first adapt density-functional theory to predict the distributions of crowds in new environments and then validate their approach using groups of fruit flies.

    • J. Felipe Méndez-Valderrama
    • , Yunus A. Kinkhabwala
    •  & T. A. Arias

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The energy-temperature uncertainty relation bounds the precision of simultaneously estimating energy and temperature of a system in equilibrium. In this article, the authors provide a generalised version which is valid for both classical and quantum systems, and at arbitrary coupling to the environment.

    • H. J. D. Miller
    •  & J. Anders

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The entanglement in a quantum system between a small region and the surrounding environment contains details about the whole state. Nakagawa et al. find a formula for the entanglement entropy of a class of thermal-like states and show that it can be applied more broadly to identify equilibrating states.

    • Yuya O. Nakagawa
    • , Masataka Watanabe
    •  & Sho Sugiura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active rotating particles were shown to undergo a phase separation through numerical simulations. Here the authors provide an experimental realization of this phenomenon by presenting an ensemble of 3D-printed robots that rotate in different directions and interact with each other.

    • Christian Scholz
    • , Michael Engel
    •  & Thorsten Pöschel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Granular gases—dilute systems composed of dissipatively colliding particles—exhibit anomalous dynamics and numerous surprising phenomena. Here, Brilliantov et al. show that the aggregation mechanism can induce increase of the gas temperature despite the fact that the total kinetic energy decreases.

    • Nikolai V. Brilliantov
    • , Arno Formella
    •  & Thorsten Pöschel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Single molecule approaches demonstrated that enzymatic catalysis is stochastic which could lead to deviations from classical predictions. Here authors rebuild the theory of enzymatic inhibition to show that stochastic fluctuations on the single enzyme level could make inhibitors act as activators.

    • Tal Robin
    • , Shlomi Reuveni
    •  & Michael Urbakh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ability to generate microscale patterns and control microswimmers may be useful for engineering smart materials. Here Arlt et al. use genetically modified bacteria with fast response to changes in light intensity to produce light-induced patterns.

    • Jochen Arlt
    • , Vincent A. Martinez
    •  & Wilson C. K. Poon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The existence of interfaces, separating distinct relaxing regions, has been predicted in glass  theory, but a direct proof remains challenging due to the amorphous nature of glasses. Ganapathi et al. identify and measure the surface tension of these interfaces in bulk supercooled colloidal liquids.

    • Divya Ganapathi
    • , K. Hima Nagamanasa
    •  & Rajesh Ganapathy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The transport dynamics of messenger ribonucleoproteins in neurons is crucial to our neuronal functions, but the detail remains elusive. Song et al. show that they are transported along the dendrites in alternating run and rest phases with their own random sojourn times, following an aging Lévy walk.

    • Minho S. Song
    • , Hyungseok C. Moon
    •  & Hye Yoon Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Complex networks are a useful tool to investigate spreading processes but topology alone is insufficient to predict information flow. Here the authors propose a measure of information flow and predict its behavior from the interplay between structure and dynamics.

    • Uzi Harush
    •  & Baruch Barzel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spin ice materials can be described using idealised models of frustrated magnetism and have motivated a revisiting of the theory of interacting dipolar systems. Bramwell shows that Onsager’s theory of polar liquids describes the Coulomb phase and predicts a distinct ‘harmonic phase’ at finite temperature.

    • Steven T. Bramwell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organizations can take different approaches to innovation: they can either follow a strategic process or a serendipitous perspective. Here Fink et al. develop a statistical model to analyse how components combine to obtain a product and thus explain the mechanism behind the two approaches.

    • T. M. A. Fink
    • , M. Reeves
    •  & R. S. Farr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cities can be treated as dynamic complex systems being controlled by the interactions among people, whilst the detail remains largely unknown. Li et al. use spatial attraction together with matching growth to unify population, roads, and socioeconomic interactions crossing ten representative cities.

    • Ruiqi Li
    • , Lei Dong
    •  & H. Eugene Stanley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The anisotropic Heisenberg model is integrable, possessing a macroscopic number of conserved quantities that constrain the many-body dynamics. Here the authors show numerically that, despite its integrability, it can exhibit diffusive and, at the isotropic point, super-diffusive behaviour.

    • Marko Ljubotina
    • , Marko Žnidarič
    •  & Tomaž Prosen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft solids have important applications in industry but their material properties can be compromised by aging. Here Bouzidet al. present a large-scale study of a model gel to investigate the aging of soft matter which can help unravel the microscopic dynamics in a range of soft solids.

    • Mehdi Bouzid
    • , Jader Colombo
    •  & Emanuela Del Gado

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Integrable models have an infinite number of conserved quantities but most realizations suffer from integrability breaking perturbations. Here the authors show that weakly driving such a system by periodic perturbations leads to large nonlinear responses governed by the approximate conservation laws.

    • Florian Lange
    • , Zala Lenarčič
    •  & Achim Rosch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photon-cutting materials provide a way around efficiency limits for energy conversion by absorbing high-energy photons and ‘cutting’ them into multiple low-energy excitations. Here, the authors show that photon-cutting material can be identified and characterised by studying their bunched emission statistics.

    • Mathijs de Jong
    • , Andries Meijerink
    •  & Freddy T. Rabouw

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study of Maxwell's demon provides a link between information thermodynamics and modern electronics. Using integrated nanometer-scale transistors in a single electron box configuration, Chidaet al., demonstrate the extraction of electrical power by Maxwell’s demon.

    • Kensaku Chida
    • , Samarth Desai
    •  & Akira Fujiwara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is believed that patterns of social ties are related to individuals’ financial status. Here the authors substantiate this concept by quantitatively demonstrating that a measure of an individual’s location and influence within their social network can be used to infer their economic wellness.

    • Shaojun Luo
    • , Flaviano Morone
    •  & Hernán A. Makse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Emergence and growth of crystalline domains in granular media remains under-explored. Here, the authors analyse tomographic snapshots from partially recrystallized packings of spheres using persistent homology and find agreement with proposed transitions based on continuous deformation of octahedral and tetrahedral voids.

    • M. Saadatfar
    • , H. Takeuchi
    •  & Y. Hiraoka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Solutions of computations can be encoded in the ground state of many-body spin models. Here the authors show that solutions to generic reversible classical computations can be encoded in the ground state of a vertex model, which can be reached without finite temperature phase transitions.

    • C. Chamon
    • , E. R. Mucciolo
    •  & Z.-C. Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nano-mechanical resonators improve with high-Q factor and light mass, but this leads to the onset of nonlinear behaviour. Here the authors demonstrate precise control of the non-linear and bistable dynamics of a levitated nanoparticle in vacuum, using it as model system to study stochastic bistable phenomena.

    • F. Ricci
    • , R. A. Rica
    •  & R. Quidant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active fluids consist of self-driven particles that can drive spontaneous flow without the intervention of external forces. Here Woodhouseet al. show how to design logic circuits using this phenomenon in active fluid networks, which could be further exploited for autonomous microfluidic computing.

    • Francis G. Woodhouse
    •  & Jörn Dunkel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The energy required to control a dynamical complex network can be prohibitively large when there are only a few control inputs. Here the authors demonstrate that if only a subset of the network is targeted the energy requirements decrease exponentially.

    • Isaac Klickstein
    • , Afroza Shirin
    •  & Francesco Sorrentino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ground states of amorphous solids are predicted to exhibit a complex energy landscape, which cannot be explained by the theories developed for crystals. Jin and Yoshino propose a simple rheological protocol to probe these states, with a demonstration by extensive molecular dynamics simulations.

    • Yuliang Jin
    •  & Hajime Yoshino

  • 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

    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

    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

    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

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