Publications

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Coupled dynamics of resource competition and constrained entrances in a multi-lane bidirectional exclusion process

Ashish Kumar Pandey, Arvind Kumar Gupta

SciPost Phys. Core 8, 089 (2025) · published 3 December 2025 | · pdf

Motivated by the role of limited particle resources in multi-species bidirectional transport processes observed in various biological and physical systems, we investigate a one-dimensional closed system consisting of two parallel lanes with narrow entrances, where each lane accommodates two oppositely directed particle species. Each particle species is linked to a separate finite reservoir, which is coupled to both lanes and regulates the entry rates of particle into the lanes. To analyze the effect of finite particle reservoirs on the stationary properties of the system, we employ a mean-field theoretical framework to characterize the density profiles, particle currents, and phase behavior, complemented by a boundary layer analysis based on fixed point methods to capture spatial variations near the boundaries. The impact of individual species population, quantified by species-specific filling factors, is systematically examined under both equal and unequal conditions. For equal filling factors, system undergoes spontaneous symmetry breaking and supports both symmetric and asymmetric phases. In contrast, for unequal filling factors, only asymmetric phases are realized, with the phase diagram exhibiting up to five distinct phases. A striking feature observed in both scenarios is the emergence of a back-and-forth transition, along with a non-monotonic dependence of the number of phases on the filling factors. All theoretical findings are extensively validated through stochastic simulations based on the Gillespie algorithm, confirming the robustness of the analytical results.
Scaling laws of shrinkage induced fragmentation phenomena

Roland Szatmári, Akio Nakahara, So Kitsunezaki, Ferenc Kun

SciPost Phys. 19, 142 (2025) · published 1 December 2025 | · pdf

We investigate the shrinkage induced breakup of thin layers of heterogeneous materials attached to a substrate, a ubiquitous natural phenomenon with a wide range of potential applications. Focusing on the evolution of the fragment ensemble, we demonstrate that the system has two distinct phases: damage phase, where the layer is cracked, however, a dominant piece persists retaining the structural integrity of the layer, and a fragmentation phase, where the layer disintegrates into numerous small pieces. Based on finite size scaling we show that the transition between the two phases occurs at a critical damage analogous to continuous phase transitions. At the critical point a fully connected crack network emerges whose structure is controlled by the strength of adhesion to the substrate. In the strong adhesion limit, damage arises from random microcrack nucleation, resembling bond percolation, while weak adhesion facilitates stress concentration and the growth of cracks to large extensions. The critical exponents of the damage to fragmentation transition agree to a reasonable accuracy with those of two-dimensional bond percolation. Our findings provide a novel insights into the mechanism of shrinkage-induced cracking revealing generic scaling laws of the phenomenon.
On the role of non-linear latent features in bipartite generative neural networks

Tony Bonnaire, Giovanni Catania, Aurélien Decelle, Beatriz Seoane

SciPost Phys. 19, 141 (2025) · published 1 December 2025 | · pdf

We investigate the phase diagram and memory retrieval capabilities of Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs), an archetypal model of bipartite energy-based neural networks, as a function of the prior distribution imposed on their hidden units—including binary, multi-state, and ReLU-like activations. Drawing connections to the Hopfield model and employing analytical tools from statistical physics of disordered systems, we explore how the architectural choices and activation functions shape the thermodynamic properties of these models. Our analysis reveals that standard RBMs with binary hidden nodes and extensive connectivity suffer from reduced critical capacity, limiting their effectiveness as associative memories. To address this, we examine several modifications, such as introducing local biases and adopting richer hidden unit priors. These adjustments restore ordered retrieval phases and markedly improve recall performance, even at finite temperatures. Our theoretical findings, supported by finite-size Monte Carlo simulations, highlight the importance of hidden unit design in enhancing the expressive power of RBMs.
Mechanical work extraction from an error-prone active dynamic Szilard engine

Luca Cocconi, Paolo Malgaretti, Holger Stark

SciPost Phys. 19, 138 (2025) · published 25 November 2025 | · pdf

Isothermal information engines operate by extracting net work from a single heat bath through measurement and feedback control. In this work, we analyze a {realistic} active Szilard engine operating on a single self-propelled particle by means of steric interaction with an externally controlled mechanical element. In particular, we provide a comprehensive study of how finite measurement accuracy affects the engine's work and power output, as well as the cost of operation. Having established the existence of non-trivial optima for work and power output, we study the dependence of their loci on the measurement error parameters and identify conditions for their positivity under one-shot and cyclic engine operation. We also demonstrate that a suitably defined efficiency of information-to-work conversion, which at equilibrium is bounded above by unity as a consequence of Landauer's principle, may here be made arbitrarily large by increasing the active Péclet number of the particle. Equivalently, for such a nonequilibrium efficiency to remain bounded above by unity, the athermal motion of the bath particles needs to be accounted for explicitly. Notably, the information efficiency for one-shot operation exhibits a discontinuous transition and a non-monotonic dependence on the measurement precision. Finally, we show that cyclic operation improves information efficiency by harvesting residual mutual information between successive measurements.
On the difference between thermalization in open and isolated quantum systems: A case study

Archak Purkayastha, Giacomo Guarnieri, Janet Anders, Marco Merkli

SciPost Phys. 19, 136 (2025) · published 25 November 2025 | · pdf

Thermalization of isolated and open quantum systems has been studied extensively. However, being the subject of investigation by different scientific communities and being analysed using different mathematical tools, the connection between the isolated (IQS) and open (OQS) approaches to thermalization has remained opaque. Here we demonstrate that the fundamental difference between the two paradigms is the order in which the long time and the thermodynamic limits are taken. This difference implies that they describe physics on widely different time and length scales. Our analysis is carried out numerically for the case of a double quantum dot (DQD) coupled to a fermionic lead, also known as the interacting resonant level model in quantum impurity physics. We show how both OQS and IQS thermalization can be explored in this model on equal footing, allowing a fair comparison between the two. We find that while the quadratically coupled (free) DQD experiences no isolated thermalization, it of course does experience open thermalization. For the non-linearly interacting DQD coupled to a fermionic lead, the many-body interaction in the DQD breaks the integrability of the whole system. We find that this system shows strong evidence of both OQS and IQS thermalization in the same dynamics, but at widely different time scales, consistent with reversing the order of the long time and the thermodynamic limits.
Bootstrapping nonequilibrium stochastic processes

Minjae Cho

SciPost Phys. 19, 124 (2025) · published 10 November 2025 | · pdf

We show that bootstrap methods based on the positivity of probability measures provide a systematic framework for studying both synchronous and asynchronous nonequilibrium stochastic processes on infinite lattices. First, we formulate linear programming problems that use positivity and invariance property of invariant measures to derive rigorous bounds on their expectation values. Second, for time evolution in asynchronous processes, we exploit the master equation along with positivity and initial conditions to construct linear and semidefinite programming problems that yield bounds on expectation values at both short and late times. We illustrate both approaches using two canonical examples: the contact process in 1+1 and 2+1 dimensions, and the Domany-Kinzel model in both synchronous and asynchronous forms in 1+1 dimensions. Our bounds on invariant measures yield rigorous lower bounds on critical rates, while those on time evolutions provide two-sided bounds on the half-life of the infection density and the temporal correlation length in the subcritical phase.
Geometric expansion of fluctuations and average shadows

Clément Berthière, Benoit Estienne, Jean-Marie Stéphan, William Witczak-Krempa

SciPost Phys. 19, 122 (2025) · published 7 November 2025 | · pdf

Fluctuations of observables provide unique insights into the nature of physical systems, and their study stands as a cornerstone of both theoretical and experimental science. Generalized fluctuations, or cumulants, provide information beyond the mean and variance of an observable. In this paper, we develop a systematic method to determine the asymptotic behavior of cumulants of local observables as the region becomes large. Our analysis reveals that the expansion is closely tied to the geometric characteristics of the region and its boundary, with coefficients given by convex moments of the connected correlation function: the latter is integrated against intrinsic volumes of convex polytopes built from the coordinates, which can be interpreted as average shadows. A particular application of our method shows that, in two dimensions, the leading behavior of odd cumulants of conserved quantities is topological, specifically depending on the Euler characteristic of the region. We illustrate these results with the paradigmatic strongly-interacting system of two-dimensional quantum Hall state at filling fraction $1/2$, by performing Monte-Carlo calculations of the skewness (third cumulant) of particle number in the Laughlin state.
Magic phase transition and non-local complexity in generalized W State

Alberto Giuseppe Catalano, Jovan Odavić, Gianpaolo Torre, Alioscia Hamma, Fabio Franchini, Salvatore Marco Giampaolo

SciPost Phys. Core 8, 078 (2025) · published 6 November 2025 | · pdf

We employ the Stabilizer Rényi Entropy (SRE) to characterize a quantum phase transition that has so far eluded any standard description and can thus now be explained in terms of the interplay between its non-stabilizer properties and entanglement. The transition under consideration separates a region with a unique ground state from one with a degenerate ground state manifold spanned by states with finite and opposite (intensive) momenta. We show that SRE has a jump at the crossing points, while the entanglement entropy remains continuous. Moreover, by leveraging a Clifford circuit mapping, we connect the observed jump in SRE to that occurring between standard and generalized $W$-states with finite momenta. This mapping allows us to quantify the SRE discontinuity analytically.
Lecture notes on large deviations in non-equilibrium diffusive systems

Bernard Derrida

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 106 (2025) · published 29 October 2025 | · pdf

These notes are a written version of lectures given in the 2024 Les Houches Summer School on Large deviations and applications. They are are based on a series of works published over the last 25 years on steady properties of non-equilibrium systems in contact with several heat baths at different temperatures or several reservoirs of particles at different densities. After recalling some classical tools to study non-equilibrium steady states, such as the use of tilted matrices, the Fluctuation theorem, the determination of transport coefficients, the Einstein relations or fluctuating hydrodynamics, they describe some of the basic ideas of the macroscopic fluctuation theory allowing to determine the large deviation functions of the density and of the current of diffusive systems.

1 citation
Mutual multilinearity of nonequilibrium network currents

Sara Dal Cengio, Pedro E. Harunari, Vivien Lecomte, Matteo Polettini

SciPost Phys. 19, 111 (2025) · published 27 October 2025 | · pdf

Continuous-time Markov chains have been successful in modelling systems across numerous fields, with currents being fundamental entities that describe the flows of energy, particles, individuals, chemical species, information, or other quantities. They apply to systems described by agents transitioning between vertices along the edges of a network (at some rate in each direction). It has recently been shown by the authors that, at stationarity, a hidden linearity exists between currents that flow along edges: if one controls the current of a specific "input" edge (by tuning transition rates along it), any other current is a linear-affine function of the input current [Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 047401 (2024)]. In this paper, we extend this result to the situation where one controls the currents of several edges, and prove that other currents are in linear-affine relation with the input ones. Two proofs with distinct insights are provided: the first relies on Kirchhoff's current law and reduces the input set inductively through graph analysis, while the second utilizes the resolvent approach via a Laplace transform in time. We obtain explicit expressions for the current-to-current susceptibilities, which allow one to map current dependencies through the network. We also verify from our expression that Kirchhoff's current law is recovered as a limiting case of our mutual linearity. Last, we uncover that susceptibilities can be obtained from fluctuations when the reference system is originally at equilibrium.

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Publications

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