2358 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 analyzes Gibbs variational principles for isolated and constant-temperature systems, demonstrates their application to Ising models, and establishes their connection to the Boltzmann irreversible theorem through the Kolmogorov equation, which predicts monotonic entropy increase and free energy decrease.
This paper demonstrates that projecting Gibbs states onto the symmetric sector of contractible one-form symmetries stabilizes distinct symmetry-protected topological and projected-paramagnetic phases in a three-dimensional cluster model, which are characterized by a quantized flux-twisted membrane invariant taking exact values of $-1$, , or $0$ under specific conditions and supported by Quantum Monte Carlo simulations.
This paper establishes scaling relations for the equilibrium thermodynamics of real-spectrum non-Hermitian Dirac fermions in a magnetic field by demonstrating that a similarity transformation maps the system to a Hermitian model with reduced velocity and effective magnetic field, thereby deriving rescaled caloric and magnetic responses across different thermodynamic ensembles.
This paper reconstructs the two-particle-irreducible vertex of the two-dimensional lattice model across the Ising transition using Monte Carlo data, revealing a multidimensional soft sector dominated by ferromagnetic and nematic channels, and demonstrates that approximating the fully irreducible vertex as a local contact term accurately reproduces self-energy dynamics via parquet and Schwinger-Dyson equations, thereby providing a first-principles benchmark for the dynamical local-vertex approximation (DA).
This paper formulates pressure-controlled drainage as bond percolation with trapping to establish a direct link between percolation theory and pressure-saturation relations, revealing that while residual saturation vanishes in the infinite-size limit for two-dimensional systems, it remains finite in three dimensions with distinct finite-size scaling behaviors.
This paper demonstrates that structural chirality in inorganic crystals can be induced solely by the ordering of anion species in heteroanionic ReO-type materials like NbOF, establishing configurational ordering as a viable route to creating a new class of chiral functional materials.
Using perturbative dynamical renormalization group techniques, this study reveals that near the critical point of non-reciprocal conserved dynamics, structural and dynamical correlations diverge according to distinct scaling laws, where dynamical behavior can be dominated by either temperature or non-reciprocal coupling, leading to new critical exponents and an equilibrium-like "odd Cahn-Hilliard" critical state.
This paper establishes momentum-space deformation as a universal design principle for engineering non-Hermitian many-body systems with tunable exceptional points that induce exponential eigenvector coalescences, enable controlled state purification with distinct size-dependent regimes, and facilitate the systematic construction of diverse non-Hermitian quantum matter.
This paper employs a phase-space network representation to demonstrate how energetic constraints and the hierarchy of weathervane loop rotations govern the global geometry, connectivity, and fractal properties of the coplanar ground-state manifold in the kagome Heisenberg antiferromagnet.
This review outlines the key computational algorithms developed to generate ultrastable glasses, comparing their efficiency, limitations, and physical interpretations to provide a comprehensive understanding of the field's current state and future opportunities.