5,502 research outputs found
Glass transition and random walks on complex energy landscapes
We present a simple mathematical model of glassy dynamics seen as a random
walk in a directed, weighted network of minima taken as a representation of the
energy landscape. Our approach gives a broader perspective to previous studies
focusing on particular examples of energy landscapes obtained by sampling
energy minima and saddles of small systems. We point out how the relation
between the energies of the minima and their number of neighbors should be
studied in connection with the network's global topology, and show how the
tools developed in complex network theory can be put to use in this context
Estimating the epidemic risk using non-uniformly sampled contact data
Many datasets describing contacts in a population suffer from incompleteness
due to population sampling and underreporting of contacts. Data-driven
simulations of spreading processes using such incomplete data lead to an
underestimation of the epidemic risk, and it is therefore important to devise
methods to correct this bias. We focus here on a non-uniform sampling of the
contacts between individuals, aimed at mimicking the results of diaries or
surveys, and consider as case studies two datasets collected in different
contexts. We show that using surrogate data built using a method developed in
the case of uniform population sampling yields an improvement with respect to
the use of the sampled data but is strongly limited by the underestimation of
the link density in the sampled network. We put forward a second method to
build surrogate data that assumes knowledge of the density of links within one
of the groups forming the population. We show that it gives very good results
when the population is strongly structured, and discuss its limitations in the
case of a population with a weaker group structure. These limitations highlight
the interest of measurements using wearable sensors able to yield accurate
information on the structure and durations of contacts
Contact patterns among high school students
Face-to-face contacts between individuals contribute to shape social networks
and play an important role in determining how infectious diseases can spread
within a population. It is thus important to obtain accurate and reliable
descriptions of human contact patterns occurring in various day-to-day life
contexts. Recent technological advances and the development of wearable sensors
able to sense proximity patterns have made it possible to gather data giving
access to time-varying contact networks of individuals in specific
environments. Here we present and analyze two such data sets describing with
high temporal resolution the contact patterns of students in a high school. We
define contact matrices describing the contact patterns between students of
different classes and show the importance of the class structure. We take
advantage of the fact that the two data sets were collected in the same setting
during several days in two successive years to perform a longitudinal analysis
on two very different timescales. We show the high stability of the contact
patterns across days and across years: the statistical distributions of numbers
and durations of contacts are the same in different periods, and we observe a
very high similarity of the contact matrices measured in different days or
different years. The rate of change of the contacts of each individual from one
day to the next is also similar in different years. We discuss the interest of
the present analysis and data sets for various fields, including in social
sciences in order to better understand and model human behavior and
interactions in different contexts, and in epidemiology in order to inform
models describing the spread of infectious diseases and design targeted
containment strategies.Comment: Supplementary Information at
http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.figshare.com/1677807/File_S1.pd
The Physics of the Glass Transition
In this talk, after a short phenomenological introduction on glasses, I will
describe some recent progresses that have been done in glasses using the
replica method in the definition and in the evaluation of the configurational
entropy (or complexity). These results are at the basis of some analytic
computations of the thermodynamic glass transition and of the properties below
the phase transition point.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, invited talk at the II Paladin Memorial
Conferenc
Random inelasticity and velocity fluctuations in a driven granular gas
We analyze the deviations from Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics found in recent
experiments studying velocity distributions in two-dimensional granular gases
driven into a non-equilibrium stationary state by a strong vertical vibration.
We show that in its simplest version, the ``stochastic thermostat'' model of
heated inelastic hard spheres, contrary to what has been hitherto stated, is
incompatible with the experimental data, although predicting a reminiscent high
velocity stretched exponential behavior with an exponent 3/2. The experimental
observations lead to refine a recently proposed random restitution coefficient
model. Very good agreement is then found with experimental velocity
distributions within this framework, which appears self-consistent and further
provides relevant probes to investigate the universality of the velocity
statistics.Comment: 5 pages, 5 eps figure
Free cooling and inelastic collapse of granular gases in high dimensions
The connection between granular gases and sticky gases has recently been
considered, leading to the conjecture that inelastic collapse is avoided for
space dimensions higher than 4. We report Molecular Dynamics simulations of
hard inelastic spheres in dimensions 4, 5 and 6. The evolution of the granular
medium is monitored throughout the cooling process. The behaviour is found to
be very similar to that of a two-dimensional system, with a shearing-like
instability of the velocity field and inelastic collapse when collisions are
inelastic enough, showing that the connection with sticky gases needs to be
revised.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures (7 postscript files), submitted to EPJ
Phase space diffusion and low temperature aging
We study the dynamical evolution of a system with a phase space consisting of
configurations with random energies. The dynamics we use is of Glauber type. It
allows for some dynamical evolution ang aging even at very low temperatures,
through the search of configurations with lower energies.Comment: 11 pages latex, 1 ps figure adde
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