cond-mat.stat-mech 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.

🌀 nonlinear sciences

Dynamical thermalization, Rayleigh-Jeans condensate, vortexes and wave collapse in quantum chaos fibers and fluid of light

This paper investigates the time evolution of nonlinear fields in chaotic D-shaped billiards, revealing that strong nonlinearity drives dynamical thermalization into a Rayleigh-Jeans condensate, while also characterizing phenomena such as wave collapse, vortex dynamics, and superfluidity in both focusing and defocusing regimes relevant to optical fibers and fluid light.

Leonardo Ermann, Alexei D. Chepelianskii, Dima L. Shepelyansky2026-02-06

🔬 condensed matter

Heat dissipation in marginally stable linear time-delayed Langevin systems

This paper investigates heat dissipation in marginally stable linear time-delayed Langevin systems, revealing that despite both diffusive and oscillatory criticality exhibiting linearly growing variance, they display fundamentally distinct thermodynamic signatures where the average heat dissipation rate approaches a constant for the former but diverges linearly with oscillations for the latter.

Xin Wang2026-02-06

⚛️ high-energy theory

Topological Defect Formation Beyond the Kibble-Zurek Mechanism in Crossover Transitions with Approximate Symmetries

This paper demonstrates that while the traditional Kibble-Zurek mechanism breaks down for topological defect formation in crossover transitions with approximate symmetries due to exponential corrections, a generalized framework incorporating explicit symmetry breaking into the dynamical correlation length successfully predicts defect density across all quench rates.

Peng Yang, Chuan-Yin Xia, Sebastian Grieninger, Hua-Bi Zeng, Matteo Baggioli2026-02-06

🔬 condensed matter

Shape-specific fluctuations of an active colloidal interface

This study investigates the dynamics of a phoretically interacting active colloidal interface with roto-translational coupling, revealing a unique non-equilibrium universality class characterized by a "C-shaped" topology and distinct scaling exponents for both height and orientational fluctuations.

Arvin Subramaniam, Tirthankar Banerjee, Rajesh Singh2026-02-06

⚛️ high-energy theory

Improving 3d Ising OPE Coefficients with Fuzzy Sphere Conformal Generators

This paper demonstrates that utilizing the special conformal generator $K$ within the fuzzy sphere framework to identify Ising CFT primary states—distinguished by an $O(1)$ gap from descendants—enables more accurate extrapolation of OPE coefficients to the continuum limit compared to previous methods.

Giulia Fardelli, A. Liam Fitzpatrick, Emanuel Katz2026-02-06

🔬 condensed matter

A Novel Mechanism of Ordering in a Coupled Driven System: Vacancy Induced Phase Separation

This paper reveals that introducing vacancies into a coupled driven system weakens reverse bias, thereby enabling novel ordered phases—specifically finite current with partial phase separation (FPPS) and vacancy induced phase separation (VIPS)—where long-range order emerges even when aligned bias is weaker than reverse bias.

Chandradip Khamrai, Sakuntala Chatterjee2026-02-06

⚛️ lattice

Reducing the Computational Cost Scaling of Tensor Network Algorithms via Field-Programmable Gate Array Parallelism

This paper proposes a fine-grained parallel tensor network design utilizing FPGAs and a quad-tile partitioning strategy to drastically reduce the computational cost scaling of iTEBD and HOTRG algorithms from $O(D_b^3)$ to $O(D_b)$ and from $O(D_b^6)$ to $O(D_b^2)$ , respectively, thereby offering a scalable hardware solution for large-scale quantum many-body calculations.

Songtai Lv, Yang Liang, Rui Zhu, Qibin Zheng, Haiyuan Zou2026-02-06

🔬 condensed matter

Geometry and dynamical morphology of growing bacterial colonies

This paper utilizes time-resolved geometric analysis of bacterial colony growth to demonstrate that visually distinct morphologies can emerge within a single-scale growth regime, with deviations from compact scaling reflecting intrinsic dynamical boundary reorganization rather than growth arrest.

Benjamin Evert Himberg, Sanghita Sengupta2026-02-06

⚛️ quantum physics

Gaussian Basis Functions for a Polymer Self-Consistent Field Theory of Atoms

This paper presents a polymer self-consistent field theory for atoms using Gaussian basis functions and an excluded-volume model to enforce the Pauli-exclusion principle, successfully calculating binding energies and electron densities for elements from hydrogen to krypton while recovering standard quantum mechanical limits.

Phil A. LeMaitre, Russell B. Thompson2026-02-05

⚛️ high-energy theory

Subsystem Thermalization Hypothesis in Quantum Spin Chains with Conserved Charges

This paper extends the universality of quantum thermalization by demonstrating that the subsystem thermalization hypothesis holds generically for small subsystems in quantum spin chains with various symmetries, not only for standard thermal ensembles but also for generalized and partial Generalized Gibbs Ensembles (p-GGEs) that incorporate partial sets of conserved charges.

Feng-Li Lin, Jhh-Jing Hong, Ching-Yu Huang2026-02-05

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