1592 papers
Statistical mechanics explores how the chaotic motion of countless tiny particles gives rise to the predictable laws governing heat, pressure, and phase transitions. This field bridges the gap between the microscopic world of atoms and the macroscopic reality we experience daily, offering deep insights into why materials behave the way they do.
On Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category as it appears on arXiv to make these complex findings accessible to everyone. For each paper, we provide both a plain-language explanation for the curious reader and a detailed technical summary for specialists, ensuring that groundbreaking research is never lost behind a wall of jargon.
Below are the latest papers in statistical mechanics, freshly curated and summarized to help you understand the cutting edge of this fascinating discipline.
This paper introduces a computationally efficient, non-iterative method for inferring interaction potentials from particle configurations at arbitrary state points by enforcing consistency between pair correlation functions derived from interparticle distances and pairwise forces, making it broadly applicable to both equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems.
This paper demonstrates that the canonical and microcanonical ensembles in quantum theory are not independent constructions but rather emerge as complementary projections from a single unified projector within an extended Hilbert space where time is treated as a dynamical clock variable subject to a reparametrization-invariant constraint.
This paper establishes a non-Markovian theoretical framework based on the Keldysh formalism and stochastic thermodynamics to describe entropy dynamics in living systems, demonstrating how environmental memory and active fluctuations drive entropy production and provide a microscopic foundation for biological processes like development, aging, and death.
This paper derives the exact solution for the three-dimensional Z2 lattice gauge theory by leveraging its duality with the 3D Ising model, while investigating the roles of nonlocal effects, topological structures, and fundamental symmetries in these many-body systems.
Using molecular dynamics simulations, this study demonstrates that the collapse of extended polymers exhibits scale-free cluster-cluster aggregation with universal dynamic scaling, where the growth exponent remains constant () across varying bending stiffness, while deviations from standard diffusion-controlled relations in stiffer polymers arise from stiffness-dependent variations in cluster structure and effective diffusion.
This paper establishes a rigorous mathematical framework for hybrid classical-quantum systems by deriving their microcanonical ensemble via a maximum entropy principle, demonstrating its well-defined nature for continuous energy values and its consistency with the canonical ensemble, while validating the theory through a toy model.
This paper demonstrates that concentration fluctuations in free liquid diffusion exhibit non-vanishing skewness and non-Gaussian statistics due to nonlinear coupling with thermal velocity fluctuations, thereby challenging the central limit theorem predictions of macroscopic fluctuation theory.
This paper presents a generalized Langevin framework to model the averaged velocity modulus of self-propelled spherical and disk-shaped Brownian particles in a harmonic potential, revealing that while an internal Ornstein-Uhlenbeck mechanism induces spontaneous velocity fluctuations, these effects diminish over time as the system evolves.
This paper derives the exact solution for a two-dimensional Ising model with next-nearest-neighbor interactions at zero magnetic field by adapting 3D Ising methods to analyze transfer matrices in multiple representations, ultimately obtaining the partition function and spontaneous magnetization to demonstrate how increased interactions and topological contributions elevate the critical point.
This paper employs a three-state compartmental model and agent-based simulations across various network topologies to analyze the nonequilibrium phase transitions between racism-free absorbing states and an active phase of persistent racist content, demonstrating how statistical physics tools can reveal the macroscopic impacts of microscopic social interactions in online environments.