🔬 Category

cond-mat.stat-mech

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.

🔬 condensed matter

Scale-dependent universality class crossover in magnetic skyrmion polymers

This study reveals that dipolar magnetic skyrmion chains, which assemble into one-dimensional polymers with alternating helicity, exhibit a scale-dependent universality class crossover in their statistical mechanics—shifting from a linear to a square-root temperature dependence in bond fluctuations—driven by competing radial interactions that create quartic transverse confinement, a behavior distinct from conventional biopolymers and robust across different interaction potentials and magnetic field strengths.

R. L. Silva, R. C. Silva, R. L. Stamps2026-07-30
🧬 biology

A behavior-environment information loop drives sensory navigation

This paper introduces an information-theoretic framework using bidirectional transfer entropy to quantify the coupling between sensory inputs and behavioral outputs, revealing that decomposing navigation into "reactive" and "active" information flows provides a unifying principle for predicting and understanding navigation strategies across diverse biological and artificial systems.

Kevin S. Chen, Matthew P. Leighton, Damon A. Clark, Thierry Emonet2026-07-30
⚛️ quantum physics

Microscopic study of topological phase transitions: Percolation point of view

This paper investigates the microscopic mechanisms of decoherence-induced topological phase transitions in color and toric codes by interpreting topological entanglement negativity and disorder parameters through a percolation framework, revealing that while quasi-local entanglement negativity effectively visualizes decohered regions, the distinct responses of these models to biased decoherence patterns indicate that a universal microscopic description of such transitions remains elusive.

Keisuke Kataoka, Ikuo Ichinose2026-07-30
🔬 condensed matter

High-dimensional theory of the glass transition revisited: hopping and local defects

This paper revisits the replicated liquid theory of the glass transition by introducing a generalized formulation that allows for particle-level replica mismatches associated with hopping and local defects, revealing that such mismatches destabilize metastable glassy states in high-dimensional hard spheres and shift transition points in harmonic spheres, thereby offering a refined microscopic description that aligns with rigorous bounds on random sphere packings.

Harukuni Ikeda, Francesco Zamponi2026-07-30
🧬 biology

Navigation driven by bidirectional information transmission between sensing and actuation

This paper introduces "Behavioral Equations of State" (BESTs), a theoretical framework demonstrating that navigation performance in both spatial- and temporal-sensing biological systems is universally determined by the strength and timescales of bidirectional information transmission between sensing and actuation, a prediction experimentally validated through stochastic simulations of *E. coli* chemotaxis.

Avishek Das, Pieter Rein ten Wolde2026-07-30
🔢 mathematics

Lee-Yang Zeros And Particle Fluctuations

This paper proves that for classical particles with stable, tempered, and lower-regular pair potentials, if the Lee-Yang zeros of the grand canonical partition function remain bounded away from a real point z0>0z_0 > 0 in the thermodynamic limit, then the thermodynamic limit and differentiation with respect to the chemical potential commute at z0z_0, ensuring the uniform convergence of all pressure derivatives and the independence of limiting density and particle-number variance from boundary conditions.

Mohamed El Hedi Bahri, Ian Jauslin, Joel L. Lebowitz2026-07-30
🔬 condensed matter

Temporal Interference from Topological Transitions in Monitored Quantum Dynamics

This paper investigates how temporal interference patterns in stroboscopically monitored quantum dynamics undergo a topological transition from winding number ww to w−2w-2 via the creation of two dark states, resulting in a distinct slow-decay oscillatory behavior in the first detection amplitude that contrasts with the monotonic decay observed in w→w−1w \to w-1 transitions.

Qingyuan Wang, Ruoyu Yin, Eli Barkai2026-07-30