🔬 Category

cond-mat.stat-mech

2368 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.

⚛️ quantum physics

Frictional work and entropy production in integrable and non-integrable spin chains

This paper demonstrates that frictional work in non-integrable spin chains is well-characterized by diagonal entropy production scaled by an effective temperature, whereas integrable chains require a sum of contributions from independent subspaces at different temperatures, ultimately revealing that integrability breaking can either enhance or degrade work extraction depending on the driving speed.

Vishnu Muraleedharan Sajitha, Matthew J. Davis, L. A. Williamson2026-07-28
🔬 condensed matter

Continuous-Time Random Walk Description of Anomalous Spin Transport in Dilute Dipolar Networks

This paper demonstrates that anomalous spin transport in dilute dipolar networks, such as natural-abundance diamond, arises from geometric trapping and heavy-tailed waiting times best described by a continuous-time random walk model, which reveals emergent subdiffusive behavior that standard Fickian diffusion equations fail to capture.

Cooper M. Selco, Christian Bengs, Ashok Ajoy2026-07-28
🔢 mathematics

Mixing times and spectra of non-equilibrium symmetric exclusion processes on general graphs

This paper investigates the non-equilibrium symmetric exclusion process on general graphs with external heat baths, establishing a tight bound on mixing time in terms of single-particle hitting times, developing an efficient algorithm to compute steady-state correlations for small vertex sets, and proving that the associated non-reversible Markov chain's spectrum is real and independent of heat bath temperatures.

Leonard J. Schulman, Alistair Sinclair2026-07-28
🔬 condensed matter

Kinetic and Hydrodynamic Theories of Chiral Intruder Dynamics in Nonequilibrium Baths

This paper investigates the chiral dynamics of an intruder in a nonequilibrium bath by deriving distinct theoretical frameworks for dilute and dense regimes, revealing that intruder shape and chiral interactions drive ratchet effects and odd responses in the kinetic limit, while hydrodynamic edge currents and torque densities govern antisymmetric drag and curvature-induced torques in the dense limit.

Raphaël Maire, Ignacio Pagonabarraga2026-07-28
🔬 materials science

Local micromechanics in a mean-field model of glasses reveal key properties of its non-equilibrium RSB phase

This paper demonstrates that defining a micromechanical response function to local force monopoles in a mean-field glass model reveals exact relations between local stiffness and global susceptibilities, thereby bridging the model's non-equilibrium Replica-Symmetry-Breaking phase with finite-dimensional glasses and linking its soft mode statistics to the boson peak.

Makoto Suda, Edan Lerner, Eran Bouchbinder2026-07-28
⚛️ quantum physics

Optimal Dynamic Cooling of Multiple Qubits

This paper solves the closed-system problem of optimally cooling MM qubits from NN thermal qubits by demonstrating that a two-step protocol of passive rearrangement followed by a complex-Hadamard transformation achieves the lowest possible common local temperature without extra work, while also establishing that at least two ancillary qubits are necessary and that joint many-target cooling outperforms parallel strategies.

Mattia Reda, Massimiliano Sacchi, Chiara Macchiavello, Giacomo Guarnieri2026-07-28
🔬 condensed matter

The Uhlenbeck-Ford model in two dimensions: Reference system for fluid-phase free-energy calculations

This paper establishes the two-dimensional Uhlenbeck-Ford model as a highly accurate and thermodynamically stable reference system for fluid-phase free-energy calculations by computing exact virial coefficients up to the tenth order, mapping its phase diagram to confirm fluid stability for scaling parameters up to p≲70p \lesssim 70, and validating its utility through thermodynamic integration of a Lennard-Jones fluid.

Samuel Cajahuaringa, Rodolfo Paula Leite, Maurice de Koning2026-07-28
⚛️ high-energy theory

Dynamical Quantum Phase Transitions in a Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian: The Imbalanced-Pairing Kitaev Model

This paper investigates the nonequilibrium dynamics of the imbalanced-pairing Kitaev model, a pseudo-Hermitian system, and demonstrates that dynamical quantum phase transitions under a linear chemical potential ramp occur exclusively when the post-ramp Hamiltonian possesses a real energy spectrum, with their critical times and velocity thresholds strongly dependent on the non-Hermiticity parameter.

R. Jafari, Alireza Akbari, Shukhrat Mardonov, H. Yavartanoo2026-07-28