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.

🔬 condensed matter

Pokrovsky--Talapov and Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless Phase Transitions in Bilayer Superconducting Films under an In-Plane Magnetic Field

This paper investigates finite-temperature phase transitions in Josephson-coupled bilayer superconducting films under an in-plane magnetic field, revealing that the system undergoes a Pokrovsky--Talapov commensurate--incommensurate transition at zero temperature and distinct Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless melting mechanisms at finite temperatures, where the active vortex channel depends on whether the system is in a commensurate Fulde--Ferrell or incommensurate Bloch superconducting state.

Yicheng Zhong, Yi Zhou2026-07-15

🧬 biology

Entropy-Driven Initiation and Cellular Uptake Mediated by Viscoelastic Cytoskeleton: A Kinetic Phase Diagram from Onsager Variational Principle

This paper proposes a unified continuum model based on the Onsager variational principle to explain receptor-mediated endocytosis, demonstrating that entropic forces from crowded biomolecules initiate ligand-receptor contact while cytoskeletal viscoelasticity and binding energies govern a kinetic phase diagram that predicts an optimal virus size matching HIV-1 dimensions.

Jinjie Liu, Zhong-Can Ou-Yang, Hao Wu2026-07-15

🌀 nonlinear sciences

Swarming and Opinion Dynamics

This paper proposes a model coupling attraction-repulsion spatial dynamics with Deffuant-type opinion dynamics to demonstrate how confidence thresholds and opinion-dependent attraction strength govern the formation of opinion clusters and their spatial organization, ultimately deriving the stationary swarm radius for full consensus.

Rommel Tchinda Djeudjo, Dibakar Ghosh, Timoteo Carletti2026-07-15

🔬 condensed matter

Optimal preparation and reachable-state constraints in the Mpemba effect

This paper investigates the Mpemba effect in granular fluids by formulating state preparation as an optimal-control problem, revealing that while the optimal protocol is a one-bang strategy, the stochastic thermostat imposes reachable-state constraints that bound non-Gaussianities and limit the maximum attainable effect.

C. Ríos-Monje, A. Patrón-Castro, C. A. Plata, B. Sánchez-Rey, A. Prados2026-07-15

🔬 condensed matter

Random motility regulation as a generic mechanism of community formation

This paper demonstrates that weak, random motility regulation driven by local strain density is a generic mechanism sufficient to induce a phase transition toward spatially segregated community formation in diverse bacterial mixtures, a finding supported by both microscopic simulations and random-matrix theory analysis of hydrodynamic descriptions.

Alberto Dinelli, Ada Altieri, Julien Tailleur2026-07-14

🔬 condensed matter

The influence of packing protocol, size ratio, and pore structure on fractal exponents in dense polydisperse packings

This study demonstrates that in dense polydisperse disk packings, the size ratio serves as a critical control parameter for fractal consistency, where larger ratios mitigate finite-size effects and reveal that while Delaunay triangulation yields uniform fractal exponents, constant pressure protocols produce distinct exponents due to cavity-induced reductions in configurational entropy and randomness, though all exponents appear to converge in the limit of an infinite size ratio.

Artem A. Vladimirov, Alexander Yu. Cherny, Eugen M. Anitas, Vladimir A. Osipov2026-07-14

🔬 condensed matter

Geometric Steady-State Thermodynamics Engine under an Isothermal Operation

This paper demonstrates that cyclically driven open quantum systems can function as reversible isothermal engines in the adiabatic limit by exploiting the parametric dependence of the instantaneous steady state to generate finite work, a mechanism distinct from and independent of the traditional Berry--Sinitsyn--Nemenman curvature-driven geometric pumping.

Ryosuke Yoshii, Hisao Hayakawa2026-07-14

🔬 condensed matter

Exact Quantum Many-Body Scars in 2D Quantum Gauge Models

This paper identifies exact quantum many-body scars in a two-dimensional $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge model by exploiting its duality with a spin- $1/2$ XY model on bipartite graphs, where a tower of exact eigenstates serves as scars, offering a versatile framework for discovering such phenomena in higher-dimensional systems.

Yuan Miao, Linhao Li, Hosho Katsura, Masahito Yamazaki2026-07-14

💰 quantitative finance

Deformation of semi-circle law for the correlated time series and Phase transition

This paper investigates how temporal correlations in financial time series deform the Wigner semicircle law of random matrices, demonstrating that correlation strength alters spectral moments and induces a phase transition between finite and divergent higher-order moments under power-law decay.

Masato Hisakado, Takuya Kaneko2026-07-14

🔬 condensed matter

Escape over a saddle by coloured noise: theory and numerics

This paper introduces a novel computational framework, featuring the Method of Division (MOD) and Hamiltonian optimal control, to model rare transition events in stochastic dynamical systems driven by colored, degenerate, and unbounded noise, demonstrating its effectiveness through applications to an inverted double-well potential and a ship capsize model.

Jiayao Shao, Tobias Grafke, Robert S. MacKay2026-07-14

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