Natural selection as coarsening

Analogies between evolutionary dynamics and statistical mechanics, such as Fisher's second-law-like "fundamental theorem of natural selection" and Wright's "fitness landscapes", have had a deep and fruitful influence on the development of evolutionary theory. Here I discuss a new conceptual link between evolution and statistical physics. I argue that natural selection can be viewed as a coarsening phenomenon, similar to the growth of domain size in quenched magnets or to Ostwald ripening in alloys and emulsions. In particular, I show that the most remarkable features of coarsening---scaling and self-similarity---have strict equivalents in evolutionary dynamics. This analogy has three main virtues: it brings a set of well-developed mathematical tools to bear on evolutionary dynamics; it suggests new problems in theoretical evolution; and it provides coarsening physics with a new exactly soluble model.Comment: Submitted to J. Stat. Phys. for special issue on evolutionary dynamic

A blackbody is not a blackbox

We discuss carefully the blackbody approximation, stressing what it is (a limit case of radiative transfer), and what it is not (the assumption that the body is perfectly absorbing, i.e. black). Furthermore, we derive the Planck spectrum without enclosing the field in a box, as is done in most textbooks. Athough convenient, this trick conceals the nature of the idealization expressed in the concept of a blackbody: first, the most obvious examples of approximate blackbodies, stars, are definitely not enclosed in boxes; second, the Planck spectrum is continuous, while the stationary modes of radiation in a box are discrete. Our derivation, although technically less elementary, is conceptually more consistent, and brings the opportunity to introduce to students the important concept of local density of states, via the resolvent formalism.Comment: 6 page

Comment on `Lost in Translation: Topological Singularities in Group Field Theory'

Gurau argued in [arXiv:1006.0714] that the gluing spaces arising as Feynman diagrams of three-dimensional group field theory are not all pseudo-manifolds. I dispute this conclusion: albeit not properly triangulated, these spaces are genuine pseudo-manifolds, viz. their singular locus is of codimension at least two

Stochastic thermodynamics of entropic transport

Seifert derived an exact fluctuation relation for diffusion processes using the concept of "stochastic system entropy". In this note we extend his formalism to entropic transport. We introduce the notion of relative stochastic entropy, or "relative surprisal", and use it to generalize Seifert's system/medium decomposition of the total entropy. This result allows to apply the concepts of stochastic thermodynamics to diffusion processes in confined geometries, such as ion channels, cellular pores or nanoporous materials. It can be seen as the equivalent for diffusion processes of Esposito and Schaller's generalized fluctuation theorem for "Maxwell demon feedbacks".Comment: 3 pages, wording change