<center><b>Latest Papers in Condensed Matter Physics</b></center>

# <center>Statistical Mechanics</center> 
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### [Tangled Worldview Model of Opinion Dynamics](http://arxiv.org/abs/1901.06372v1) (1901.06372v1)
<b>Hardik Rajpal, Fernando Rosas, Henrik Jensen</b>

<i>2019-01-18</i>
> We study the joint evolution of worldviews by proposing a model of opinion dynamics, which is inspired in notions from evolutionary ecology. Agents update their opinion on a specific issue based on their propensity to change -- asserted by the social neighbours -- weighted by their mutual similarity on other issues. Agents are, therefore, more influenced by neighbours with similar worldviews (set of opinions on various issues), resulting in a complex co-evolution of each opinion. Simulations show that the worldview evolution exhibits events of intermittent polarization when the social network is scale-free. This, in turn, trigger extreme crashes and surges in the popularity of various opinions. Using the proposed model, we highlight the role of network structure, bounded rationality of agents, and the role of key influential agents in causing polarization and intermittent reformation of worldviews on scale-free networks.

### [Asymptotic Prethermalization in Periodically Driven Classical Spin  Chains](http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.04910v2) (1802.04910v2)
<b>Owen Howell, Phillip Weinberg, Dries Sels, Anatoli Polkovnikov, Marin Bukov</b>

<i>2018-02-14</i>
> We reveal a continuous dynamical heating transition between a prethermal and an infinite-temperature stage in a clean, chaotic periodically driven classical spin chain. The transition time is a steep exponential function of the drive frequency, showing that the exponentially long-lived prethermal plateau, originally observed in quantum Floquet systems, survives the classical limit. Even though there is no straightforward generalization of Floquet's theorem to nonlinear systems, we present strong evidence that the prethermal physics is well described by the inverse-frequency expansion. We relate the stability and robustness of the prethermal plateau to drive-induced synchronization not captured by the expansion. Our results set the pathway to transfer the ideas of Floquet engineering to classical many-body systems, and are directly relevant for photonic crystals and cold atom experiments in the superfluid regime.

### [Quantifying shared information in quantum non-equilibrium steady-states](http://arxiv.org/abs/1809.09931v2) (1809.09931v2)
<b>William T. B. Malouf, John Goold, Gerardo Adesso, Gabriel T. Landi</b>

<i>2018-09-26</i>
> Non-equilibrium steady-states are characterized by the existence of macroscopic heat currents flowing between two or more reservoirs. However, the existence of these currents also implies that information is constantly being transmitted from one part of the chain to the other. In this paper we address how to quantify the amount of information that disconnected parts of a quantum chain share in a non-equilibrium steady-state. As we show, this is more precisely captured by the conditional mutual information (CMI), a more general quantifier of tripartite correlations than the usual mutual information. We then apply this to an exactly soluble model allowing for both ballistic and diffusive behavior. Our approach allows us to compute the CMI for arbitrary sizes and thus find the scaling rules connecting information sharing and diffusivity. Finally, we discuss how this new perspective in the characterization of non-equilibrium systems may be applied to understand the issue of local equilibration in non-equilibrium states.

### [Dissipation induced transitions in two dimensional elastic membranes](http://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04368v2) (1803.04368v2)
<b>Michael Nguyen, Suriyanarayanan Vaikuntanathan</b>

<i>2018-03-12</i>
> Stochastic thermodynamics provides a useful set of tools to analyze and constrain the behavior of far from equilibrium systems. In this paper, we report an application of ideas from stochastic thermodynamics to the problem of membrane growth. Non-equilibrium forcing of the membrane can cause it to buckle and undergo a morphological transformation. We show how ideas from stochastic thermodynamics, in particular a recent application to self-assembly, can be used to phenomenologically describe and constrain morphological changes excited during a non-equilibrium growth process.

### [Using nonequilibrium thermodynamics to optimize the cooling of a dilute  atomic gas](http://arxiv.org/abs/1901.06188v1) (1901.06188v1)
<b>Daniel Mayer, Felix Schmidt, Steve Haupt, Quentin Bouton, Daniel Adam, Tobias Lausch, Eric Lutz, Artur Widera</b>

<i>2019-01-18</i>
> Optimizing thermodynamic processes far from equilibrium is a challenge. We report the experimental optimization of cooling and thermalization of a gas of few noninteracting Cesium atoms confined in a nonharmonic optical dipole trap. To this end, we combine degenerate Raman sideband cooling and nonequilibrium thermodynamics. We determine the axial phase-space distribution of the atoms after each Raman cooling pulse by tracing the evolution of the gas with position-resolved fluorescence imaging. We further minimize the entropy production to a target thermal state to specify the optimal spacing between a sequence of pulses, thus achieving optimal thermalization. We finally study the dynamics of the cooling process by measuring the statistical distance between each cooling step. Our results provide a method to systematically optimize the cooling of nonharmonically trapped dilute gases and illustrate the power of nonequilibrium thermodynamics.

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