Ultimately, the eventual extinction of any biological population is an inevitable outcome. While extensive research has focused on the average time it takes for a population to go extinct under various circumstances, there has been limited exploration of the distributions of extinction times and the likelihood of significant fluctuations. Recently, Hathcock and Strogatz [D. Hathcock and S. H. Strogatz, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 218301 (2022)] identified Gumbel statistics as a universal asymptotic distribution for extinction-prone dynamics in a stable environment. In this study we aim to provide a comprehensive survey of this problem by examining a range of plausible scenarios, including extinction-prone, marginal (neutral), and stable dynamics. We consider the influence of demographic stochasticity, which arises from the inherent randomness of the birth-death process, as well as cases where stochasticity originates from the more pronounced effect of random environmental variations. Our work proposes several generic criteria that can be used for the classification of experimental and empirical systems, thereby enhancing our ability to discern the mechanisms governing extinction dynamics. Employing these criteria can help clarify the underlying mechanisms driving extinction processes.

The local elastic properties of strongly disordered material are investigated using the theory of correlated random matrices. A significant increase in stiffness is shown in the interfacial region, the thickness of which depends on the strength of disorder. It is shown that this effect plays a crucial role in nanocomposites, in which interfacial regions are formed around each nanoparticle. The studied interfacial effect can significantly increase the influence of nanoparticles on the macroscopic stiffness of nanocomposites. The obtained thickness of the interfacial region is determined by the heterogeneity lengthscale and is of the same order as the lengthscale of the boson peak.

In inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions, mixing the ablator into the fuel and the hot spot is one of the most adverse factors that lead to ignition degradation. Recent experiments in the Marble campaign at the Omega laser facility and the National Ignition Facility demonstrate the significance of the temperature separation in heterogeneous mixing flows [Haines et al., Nat. Commun. 11, 544 (2020)]. In the present work we provide an approach to deal with thermally disequilibrium multicomponent flows with the ultimate aim to investigate the temperature separation impact on mixing and fusion burn. The present work is twofold: (a) We derive a model governing the multicomponent flows in thermal disequilibrium with transport terms and (b) we use the derived model to study the Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability in thermally relaxing multicomponent systems. The model is reduced from the full disequilibrium multiphase Baer-Nunziato model in the limit of small Knudsen number $\text{Kn}\ll 1$. Velocity disequilibrium is closed with the diffusion laws and only one mass-weighted velocity is retained formally. Thus, the complex wave structure of the original Baer-Nunziato model is simplified to a large extent and the obtained model is much more computationally affordable. Moreover, the capability to deal with finite-temperature relaxation is kept. Efficient numerical methods for solving the proposed model are also presented. Equipped with the proposed model and numerical methods, we further investigate the impact of thermal relaxation on the RT instability development at the ICF deceleration stage. On the basis of numerical simulations, we have found that for the RT instability at an interface between the high-density low-temperature component and the low-density high-temperature component, the thermal relaxation significantly suppresses the development of the instability.

We present a fine-grained approach to identify clusters and perform percolation analysis in a two-dimensional (2D) lattice system. In our approach, we develop an algorithm based on the linked-list data structure whereby the members of a cluster are nodes of a path. This path is mapped to a linked-list. This approach facilitates unique cluster labeling in a lattice with a single scan. We use the algorithm to determine the critical exponent in the quench dynamics from the Mott insulator to the superfluid phase of bosons in 2D square optical lattices. The results obtained are consistent with the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. We also employ the algorithm to compute the correlation length using definitions based on percolation theory and use it to identify the quantum critical point of the Bose Glass to superfluid transition in the disordered 2D square optical lattices. In addition, we compute the critical exponent $\nu$ which quantify the divergence of the correlation length $\xi$ across the phase transition and the fractal dimension of the hulls of the superfluid clusters.

Static structure factors are computed for large-scale, mechanically stable, jammed packings of frictionless spheres (three dimensions) and disks (two dimensions) with broad, power-law size dispersity characterized by the exponent $-\beta$. The static structure factor exhibits diverging power-law behavior for small wave numbers, allowing us to identify a structural fractal dimension $d_f$. In three dimensions, $d_f\approx 2.0$ for $2.5\le \beta \le 3.8$, such that each of the structure factors can be collapsed onto a universal curve. In two dimensions, we instead find $1.0\lesssim d_f\lesssim 1.34$ for $2.1\le \beta \le 2.9$. Furthermore, we show that the fractal behavior persists when rattler particles are removed, indicating that the long-wavelength structural properties of the packings are controlled by the large particle backbone conferring mechanical rigidity to the system. A numerical scheme for computing structure factors for triclinic unit cells is presented and employed to analyze the jammed packings.

The ground state, entropy, and magnetic Grüneisen parameter of the antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg model on a double sawtooth ladder are rigorously investigated using the classical transfer-matrix technique. The model includes the XXZ interaction between the interstitial Heisenberg dimers, the Ising coupling between nearest-neighbor spins of the legs and rungs, and additional cyclic four-spin Ising term in each square plaquette. For a particular value of the cyclic four-spin exchange, we found in the ground-state phase diagram of the Ising-Heisenberg ladder a quadruple point, at which four different ground states coexist together. During an adiabatic demagnetization process, a fast cooling accompanied with an enhanced magnetocaloric effect can be detected near this quadruple point. The ground-state phase diagram of the Ising-Heisenberg ladder is confronted with the zero-temperature magnetization process of the purely quantum Heisenberg ladder, which is calculated by using exact diagonalization based on the Lanczos algorithm for a finite-size ladder of 24 spins and the density-matrix renormalization group simulations for a finite-size ladder with up to 96 spins. Some indications of the existence of intermediate magnetization plateaus in the magnetization process of the full Heisenberg model for a small but nonzero four-spin Ising coupling were found. The DMRG results reveal that the quantum Heisenberg double sawtooth ladder exhibits some quantum Luttinger spin-liquid phase regions that are absent in the Ising-Heisenberg counterpart model. Except this difference, the magnetic behavior of the full Heisenberg model is quite analogous to its simplified Ising-Heisenberg counterpart and, hence, may bring insight into the fully quantum Heisenberg model from rigorous results for the Ising-Heisenberg model.

Density profiles are investigated arising in a critical Ising model in two dimensions which is confined to a rectangular domain with uniform or mixed boundary conditions and arbitrary aspect ratio. For the cases in which the two vertical sides of the rectangle have up-spin boundary conditions $+$ and the two horizontal sides with either down-spin boundary conditions $-$ or with free-spin boundary conditions $f$, exact results are presented for the density profiles of the energy and the order parameter which display a surprisingly rich behavior. The new results follow by means of conformal transformations from known results in the half plane with $+-+-+$ and $+f+f+$ boundary conditions. The corners with mixed boundary conditions lead to interesting behavior, even in the limit of a half-infinite strip. The behavior near these corners can be described by a “corner-operator-expansion,” which is discussed in the second part of the paper. The analytic predictions agree very well with simulations, with no adjustable parameters.

The maximum likelihood method is the best-known method for estimating the probabilities behind the data. However, the conventional method obtains the probability model closest to the empirical distribution, resulting in overfitting. Then regularization methods prevent the model from being excessively close to the wrong probability, but little is known systematically about their performance. The idea of regularization is similar to error-correcting codes, which obtain optimal decoding by mixing suboptimal solutions with an incorrectly received code. The optimal decoding in error-correcting codes is achieved based on gauge symmetry. We propose a theoretically guaranteed regularization in the maximum likelihood method by focusing on a gauge symmetry in Kullback-Leibler divergence. In our approach, we obtain the optimal model without the need to search for hyperparameters frequently appearing in regularization.

We present an effective Lagrangian for the ${\varphi }^4$ model that includes radiation modes as collective coordinates. The coupling between these modes to the discrete part of the spectrum, i.e., the zero mode and the shape mode, gives rise to different phenomena which can be understood in a simple way in our approach. In particular, some aspects of the short time evolution of the energy transfer among radiation, translation, and shape modes is carefully investigated in the single-kink sector. Finally, we also discuss in this framework the inclusion of radiation modes in the study of oscillons. This leads to relevant phenomena such as the oscillon decay and the kink-antikink creation.

Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust motor-free mechanism that can generate contraction in biopolymer networks without the need for substrate polarity. We show that contractility is a natural consequence of active binding-unbinding of crosslinkers that breaks the principle of detailed balance, together with the asymmetric force-extension response of semiflexible biopolymers. We have extended our earlier work to discuss the motor-free contraction of viscoelastic biopolymer networks. We calculate the resulting contractile velocity using a microscopic model and show that it can be reduced to a simple coarse-grained model under certain limits. Our model may provide an explanation of recent reports of motor-independent contractility in cells. Our results also suggest a mechanism for generating contractile forces in synthetic active materials.

Disordered hyperuniform materials are an emerging class of exotic amorphous states of matter that endow them with singular physical properties, including large isotropic photonic band gaps, superior resistance to fracture, and nearly optimal electrical and thermal transport properties, to name but a few. Here we generalize the Fourier-space-based numerical construction procedure for designing and generating digital realizations of isotropic disordered hyperuniform two-phase heterogeneous materials (i.e., composites) developed by Chen and Torquato [Acta Mater. 142, 152 (2018)] to anisotropic microstructures with targeted spectral densities. Our generalized construction procedure explicitly incorporates the vector-dependent spectral density function ${\tilde{\chi }}_{{}_V}\left(\mathbf{k}\right)$ of arbitrary form that is realizable. We demonstrate the utility of the procedure by generating a wide spectrum of anisotropic stealthy hyperuniform microstructures with ${\tilde{\chi }}_{{}_V}\left(\mathbf{k}\right)=0$ for $\mathbf{k}\in \mathrm{\Omega }$, i.e., complete suppression of scattering in an “exclusion” region $\mathrm{\Omega }$ around the origin in Fourier space. We show how different exclusion-region shapes with various discrete symmetries, including circular-disk, elliptical-disk, square, rectangular, butterfly-shaped, and lemniscate-shaped regions of varying size, affect the resulting statistically anisotropic microstructures as a function of the phase volume fraction. The latter two cases of $\mathrm{\Omega }$ lead to directionally hyperuniform composites, which are stealthy hyperuniform only along certain directions and are nonhyperuniform along others. We find that while the circular-disk exclusion regions give rise to isotropic hyperuniform composite microstructures, the directional hyperuniform behaviors imposed by the shape asymmetry (or anisotropy) of certain exclusion regions give rise to distinct anisotropic structures and degree of uniformity in the distribution of the phases on intermediate and large length scales along different directions. Moreover, while the anisotropic exclusion regions impose strong constraints on the global symmetry of the resulting media, they can still possess structures at a local level that are nearly isotropic. Both the isotropic and anisotropic hyperuniform microstructures associated with the elliptical-disk, square, and rectangular $\mathrm{\Omega }$ possess phase-inversion symmetry over certain range of volume fractions and a percolation threshold ${\varphi }_c\approx 0.5$. On the other hand, the directionally hyperuniform microstructures associated with the butterfly-shaped and lemniscate-shaped $\mathrm{\Omega }$ do not possess phase-inversion symmetry and percolate along certain directions at much lower volume fractions. We also apply our general procedure to construct stealthy nonhyperuniform systems. Our construction algorithm enables one to control the statistical anisotropy of composite microstructures via the shape, size, and symmetries of $\mathrm{\Omega }$, which is crucial to engineering directional optical, transport, and mechanical properties of two-phase composite media.

The oscillatory behavior observed during the emptying of a vertical cylinder partially filled with water has been studied for large neck-to-bottle diameter ratios, $d^{*}$. For large apertures ($d^{*}>0.8$), a Taylor bubble invades the cylinder from the bottom, and its rising speed exhibits periodic oscillations coupled to periodic motions of the free surface limiting the top air buffer initially present in the bottle. We introduce an elementary model where the vertical oscillation of the free surface is represented by a variable mass oscillator exciting the oscillatory dynamics of the Taylor bubble. In this system, the top-air buffer acts as a spring, whose stiffness is related to its compressibility. The variable mass is the mass of the liquid in the cylinder that decreases as the Taylor bubble progresses during the emptying. The motion of the bubble is solved assuming that the unsteady flow generated by the free-surface motion is potential in the vicinity of the apex of the bubble. A comparison with experimental results obtained at the laboratory shows that the model agrees well with the data if it takes into account dissipation. This study shows that a viscous damping, proportional to the velocity, with a constant damping coefficient is able to accurately represent the dissipative processes such as the effect of viscous Stokes boundary layers at the walls.

Random trajectories of single particles in living cells contain information about the interaction between particles, as well as with the cellular environment. However, precise consideration of the underlying stochastic properties, beyond normal diffusion, remains a challenge as applied to each particle trajectory separately. In this paper, we show how positions of confined particles in living cells can obey not only the Laplace distribution, but the Linnik one. This feature is detected in experimental data for the motion of G proteins and coupled receptors in cells, and its origin is explained in terms of stochastic resetting. This resetting process generates power-law waiting times, giving rise to the Linnik statistics in confined motion, and also includes exponentially distributed times as a limit case leading to the Laplace one. The stochastic process, which is affected by the resetting, can be Brownian motion commonly found in cells. Other possible models producing similar effects are discussed.

We formulate a renormalization-group approach to a general nonlinear oscillator problem. The approach is based on the exact group law obeyed by solutions of the corresponding ordinary differential equation. We consider both the autonomous models with time-independent parameters, as well as nonautonomous models with slowly varying parameters. We show that the renormalization-group equations for the nonautonomous case can be used to determine the geometric phase acquired by the oscillator during the change of its parameters. We illustrate the obtained results by applying them to the Van der Pol and Van der Pol-Duffing models.

We consider a class of spreading processes on networks, which generalize commonly used epidemic models such as the SIR model or the SIS model with a bounded number of reinfections. We analyze the related problem of inference of the dynamics based on its partial observations. We analyze these inference problems on random networks via a message-passing inference algorithm derived from the belief propagation (BP) equations. We investigate whether said algorithm solves the problems in a Bayes-optimal way, i.e., no other algorithm can reach a better performance. For this, we leverage the so-called Nishimori conditions that must be satisfied by a Bayes-optimal algorithm. We also probe for phase transitions by considering the convergence time and by initializing the algorithm in both a random and an informed way and comparing the resulting fixed points. We present the corresponding phase diagrams. We find large regions of parameters where even for moderate system sizes the BP algorithm converges and satisfies closely the Nishimori conditions, and the problem is thus conjectured to be solved optimally in those regions. In other limited areas of the space of parameters, the Nishimori conditions are no longer satisfied and the BP algorithm struggles to converge. No sign of a phase transition is detected, however, and we attribute this failure of optimality to finite-size effects. The article is accompanied by a Python implementation of the algorithm that is easy to use or adapt.

Tailoring the materials for a given task by modifying their elastic properties is attractive to material scientists. However, recent studies of purely geometrical atomic models with structural modifications showed that designing a particular change to achieve the desired elastic properties is complex. This work concerns the impact of nanochannel inclusions in fcc hard sphere crystal on its elastic properties, especially auxetic ones. The models containing six nanochannel arrays of spheres of another diameter, oriented along the [110]-direction and its symmetric equivalents, have been studied by Monte Carlo simulations in the isothermal-isobaric $\left(NpT\right)$ ensemble using the Parinello-Rahman approach. The inclusions have been designed such that they do not affect the cubic symmetry of the crystal. The elastic properties of three different models containing inclusions of various sizes are investigated under four thermodynamic conditions. We find that six nanochannels filled with hard spheres of larger diameter increase system stiffness compared with the fcc crystal without nanoinclusions. The current finding contrasts the recently reported results [J.W. Narojczyk et al. Phys. Status Solidi B 259, 2200464 (2022)], where the fcc hard sphere crystal with four nanochannels shows reduced stiffness compared to the system without nanoinclusions. Moreover, the six nanochannel models preserve auxetic properties in contrast to the fcc hard sphere crystal with four nanochannel arrays, which loses auxeticity.

We report the experimental observation of intermittency in a regime dominated by random shock waves on the surface of a fluid. We achieved such a nondispersive surface-wave field using a magnetic fluid subjected to a high external magnetic field. We found that the small-scale intermittency of the wave-amplitude fluctuations is due to shock waves, leading to much more intense intermittency than previously reported in three-dimensional hydrodynamics turbulence or in wave turbulence. The statistical properties of intermittency are found to be in good agreement with the predictions of a Burgers-like intermittency model. Such experimental evidence of random shock-wave intermittency could lead to applications in various fields.

The fast ignition paradigm for inertial fusion offers increased gain and tolerance of asymmetry by compressing fuel at low entropy and then quickly igniting a small region. Because this hot spot rapidly disassembles, the ions must be heated to ignition temperature as quickly as possible, but most ignitor designs directly heat electrons. A constant-power ignitor pulse, which is generally assumed, is suboptimal for coupling energy from electrons to ions. Using a simple model of a hot spot in isochoric plasma, a pulse shape to maximize ion heating is presented in analytical form. Bounds are derived on the maximum ion temperature attainable by electron heating only. Moreover, arranging for faster ion heating allows a smaller hot spot, improving fusion gain. Under representative conditions, the optimized pulse can reduce ignition energy by over $20\%$.