2377 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 provides a sharp asymptotic characterization of self-training for linear classifiers on high-dimensional Gaussian mixtures, revealing that it improves generalization through distinct mechanisms depending on iteration count while offering heuristics to overcome performance degradation caused by label imbalance.
This paper investigates the phase structure of long-range entangled states under competing non-commuting weak measurements, revealing that the readout protocol critically determines whether the system undergoes a direct entanglement transition, a strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking transition, or a complex mixed-state transition involving both phenomena.
This paper introduces a dual-fidelity framework combining mutual information and 2-Wasserstein distance to reveal that cellular signaling networks optimize both informational and geometric fidelity in a topology-dependent manner, offering a more comprehensive characterization of signal processing than mutual information alone.
This paper experimentally demonstrates and controls the tunable Mpemba effect in a disordered C nuclear-spin network within diamond, showing how defect-induced spatial polarization profiles and Floquet-driven prethermal dynamics allow states initially farther from equilibrium to overtake closer ones by selectively populating distinct relaxation modes.
This study reveals that while particle-number entropy effectively detects thermal avalanches in a quasiperiodic XXZ chain, two-point correlations fail to do so, indicating that standard avalanche theory requires revision to account for the unique short-range correlations inherent in quasiperiodic potentials.
This paper demonstrates that reliable, decentralized computation can emerge in asynchronous many-body systems by introducing an inertial mechanism through asymmetrically coupled components, a strategy validated through theoretical modeling, neuromorphic hardware experiments, and software applications like movie denoising.
This paper investigates a one-dimensional spinless fermionic system with localized sources and sinks under bulk dephasing, revealing that dephasing suppresses coherent quantum features like Friedel oscillations and secondary density peaks while altering transport dynamics from ballistic to diffusive regimes.
This paper addresses internal inconsistencies in previous formulations of one-dimensional nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics by developing a general, systematic approach to construct effective field theories as coupled stochastic Langevin equations that satisfy key physical requirements, which is then validated through numerical integration on a model with non-Gaussian equilibrium.
This paper investigates the definitions of thermodynamic quantities for strongly coupled quantum systems during sudden quenches, demonstrating that while the first law holds for three candidate definitions, only two satisfy the second law of thermodynamics.
This paper proposes and numerically demonstrates that spontaneous quantum turbulence, characterized by a proliferation of quantum vortices, can be generated in a newborn Bose-Einstein condensate via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism during a thermal quench, establishing its nonequilibrium universality through Kibble-Zurek and Kolmogorov scaling.