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Statistical physics and thermodynamics provide a framework for relating the behaviour of microscopic particles to the macroscopic properties of a system. Thermodynamics casts these macroscopic, or observable, properties in terms of variables that are subject to constraints imposed by the four laws of thermodynamics, which can be explained by statistical physics.
Entropy is central to statistical physics, but it has multiple meanings. This Review clarifies the strengths of each use and the connections between them, seeking to bolster crosstalk between researchers and to emphasize the power of inference for non-equilibrium physics.
From the cardiac system of various human patients, to changes in sea surface temperature across different oceans, dynamical systems often exhibit many common characteristics. Here we develop a framework for jointly learning the dynamics of multiple interrelated systems while leveraging their shared traits.
The study of defects and boundaries in the context of conformal field theory is important but challenging in dimensions higher than two. Here the authors use the recently developed fuzzy sphere regularization approach to perform non-perturbative analysis of defect conformal field theory in 3D
Toroidic phases and their phase transitions are notoriously hard to study in natural materials. Now, a direct-kagome spin ice provides access to two low-temperature toroidal phases, ferrotoroidicity and paratoroidicity, as well as to toroidic phase transitions.
By studying inertial spinners on an air table with different ratios between counterclockwise and clockwise species, the authors found that underdamped chiral spinners display phenomena usually unseen in overdamped chiral spinners. These include higher energy pumped into the minority species and oscillatory entropy when one species dominates the other.
Can many-body systems be beneficial to designing quantum technologies? We address this question by examining quantum engines, where recent studies indicate potential benefits through the harnessing of many-body effects, such as divergences close to phase transitions. However, open questions remain regarding their real-world applications.
During extreme storms, the failure of a small fraction of transmission lines can trigger a cascade of outages in a power grid. Going beyond static approaches, it is now demonstrated that resolving the spatio-temporal interactions between the storm and the power grid is key to identifying these critical lines.
Stable regions in four-dimensional phase space have been observed by following the motion of accelerated proton beams subject to nonlinear forces. This provides insights into the physics of dynamical systems and may lead to improved accelerator designs.
Ageing is a non-linear, irreversible process that defines many properties of glassy materials. Now, it is shown that the so-called material-time formalism can describe ageing in terms of equilibrium-like properties.
Quasicrystals are ordered but not periodic, which makes them fascinating objects at the interface between order and disorder. Experiments with ultracold atoms zoom in on this interface by driving a quasicrystal and exploring its fractal properties.