Browse Physics

The composition of cells in tissues can be found using statistical fluctuations of cell types.

A statistical model favors an unexpected mechanism for avoiding duplicated genetic material in certain viruses.

Defining a “temperature” for granular materials would allow them to be described with an equation of state.

New calculations determine the minimum cost of making a quantum measurement.

A new model of molecular motors working in unison finds that motor-motor interactions can boost the efficiency of the system.

Methods from statistical physics and graph theory help uncover the structure of human language.

Particles on a surface can have a negative mobility when subject to an oscillating driving force.

Researchers have found an exact solution to an equation describing growth of materials at interfaces.

The behavior of freezing transitions in glasses is related to the statistical properties of prime numbers.

The scale invariance that has been seen in flocks of birds is showing up in clusters of bacteria.

Weak localization of light is observed in a superdiffusive fractal system.

Bumblebee flight patterns reveal how the presence of spiders causes bees to modify their foraging strategies.

Calculations reveal the relationship between work and free energy for a quantum particle contained in a box with a moving wall.

Nanopatterned surfaces could, according to calculations, provide a way to sort tiny particles by size.

Under certain constraints, two lattice gases equilibrate when brought into contact.

A semiclassical approximation gives an accurate answer to a simply stated, but difficult to solve, quantum mechanical problem.

The principles of nonequilibrium thermodynamics simplify the statistical description of the flow of a rarefied gas.

Small systems with fluctuations appear to show that the second law of thermodynamics may be split into two contributions.

Sedimenting particles subjected to periodic shear are used to demonstrate a link between self-organized criticality and nonequilibrium phase transitions.

Statistical physicists have long known that brief reductions in entropy are possible. Now, entropy changes in two nonequilibrium systems have been calculated exactly.