arXiv subjects

Damián H. Zanette

Publications and source records attributed to Damián H. Zanette.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Logistic dynamics of small populations with demographic stochasticity

We study an ecology-inspired model for a population of bounded size, whose dynamics is governed by random birth, death, and immigration events. Stochastic fluctuations in the number of individuals give rise to a succession of alternating active and vacant periods, where the population is respectively extant and extinct. Using both analytical and numerical techniques, we characterize the statistics of the two kinds of period, quantifying their duration and frequency, and the typical population sizes in active periods. In sharp contrast to the deterministic mean-field behavior, governed by logistic dynamics, active periods may exhibit pronounced bimodality: either short durations with very small populations, or much longer durations with population sizes close to the maximum. We also investigate how these results change when the population evolves on random networks of three classes: Erdős-Rényi, regular, and geographic. The main effect of the network structure is to induce population clustering, with individuals aggregated into localized groups. This, in turn, limits population growth and increases the frequency of vacant periods.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2026

Exact and Approximate Constants of Motion in Stochastic Contact Processes

We study a variety of stochastic contact processes -- directly related to models of rumor and disease spreading -- from the viewpoint of their constants of motion, either exact or approximated. Much as in deterministic systems, constants of motion in stochastic dynamics make it possible to reduce the number of relevant variables, confining the set of accessible states, and thus facilitating their analytical treatment. For processes of rumor propagation based on the Maki-Thompson model, we show how to construct exact constants of motion as linear combinations of conserved quantities in each elementary contact event, and how they relate to the constants of motion of the corresponding mean-field equations, which are obtained as the continuous-time, large-size limit of the stochastic process. For SIR epidemic models, both in homogeneous systems and on heterogeneous networks, we find that a similar procedure produces approximate constants of motion, whose average value is preserved along the evolution. We also give examples of exact and approximate constants of motion built as nonlinear combinations of the relevant variables, whose expressions are suggested by their mean-field counterparts.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

The Emergence of the Normal Distribution in Deterministic Chaotic Maps

The Central Limit Theorem states that, in the limit of a large number of terms, an appropriately scaled sum of independent random variables yields another random variable whose probability distribution tends to a stable distribution. The condition of independence, however, only holds in real systems as an approximation. To extend the theorem to more general situations, previous studies have derived a version of the Central Limit Theorem that also holds for variables that are not independent. Here, we present numerical results that characterize how convergence is attained when the variables being summed are deterministically related to one another by the recurrent application of an ergodic mapping. In all the explored cases, the convergence to the limit distribution is slower than for random sampling. Yet, the speed at which convergence is attained varies substantially from system to system, and these variations imply differences in the way information about the deterministic nature of the dynamics is progressively lost as the number of summands increases. Some of the identified factors in shaping the convergence process are the strength of mixing induced by the mapping and the shape of the marginal distribution of each variable, most particularly, the presence of divergences or fat tails.

physics.data-an↗

arXiv2022

Dynamical phases transitions in periodically driven Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer systems

We present a systematic study of the dynamical phase diagram of a periodically driven BCS system as a function of drive strength and frequency. Three different driving mechanism are considered and compared: oscillating density of states, oscillating pairing interaction and oscillating external paring field. We identify the locus in parameter space of parametric resonances and four dynamical phases: Rabi-Higgs, gapless, synchronized Higgs and time-crystal. We demonstrate that the main features of the phase diagram are quite robust to different driving protocols and discuss the order of the transitions. By mapping the BCS problem to a collection of nonlinear and interacting classical oscillators, we shed light on the origin of time-crsytalline phases and parametric resonances appearing for subgap excitations.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Multistability of globally coupled Duffing oscillators

We analyze the collective dynamics of an ensemble of globally coupled, externally forced, identical mechanical oscillators with cubic nonlinearity. Focus is put on solutions where the ensemble splits into two internally synchronized clusters, as a consequence of the bistability of individual oscillators. The multiplicity of these solutions, induced by the many possible ways of distributing the oscillators between the two clusters, implies that the ensemble can exhibit multistability. As the strength of coupling grows, however, the two-cluster solutions are replaced by a state of full synchronization. By a combination of analytical and numerical techniques, we study the existence and stability of two-cluster solutions. The role of the distribution of oscillators between the clusters and the relative prevalence of the two stable solutions are disclosed.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2021

Energy exchange in globally coupled mechanical phase oscillators

We study the stationary dynamics of energy exchange in an ensemble of phase oscillators, coupled through a mean-field mechanical interaction and added with friction and an external periodic excitation. The degree of entrainment between different parts of the ensemble and the external forcing determines three dynamical regimes, each of them characterized by specific rates of energy exchange. Using suitable approximations, we are able to obtain analytical expressions for those rates, which are in satisfactory agreement with results from numerical integration of the equations of motion. In some of the dynamical regimes, the rates of energy exchange show nontrivial dependence on the friction coefficients --in particular, non-monotonic behavior and sign switching. This suggests that, even in this kind of stylized model, power transfer between different parts of the ensemble and to the environment can be manipulated by a convenient choice of the individual oscillator parameters.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2021

Energy flow and dissipation in heterogeneous ensembles of coupled phase oscillators

We present analytical expressions and numerical results for the rates of energy exchange between oscillators and with the environment in a heterogeneous ensemble of globally coupled mechanical phase oscillators. The system is in stationary motion under the combined action of an external harmonic excitation, coupling, and friction. Individual moments of inertia and friction coefficients are different between oscillators. Three dynamical regimes, with different degrees of entrainment with the external excitation, are characterized. In two of these regimes, the rates of energy exchange show nontrivial dependence on the moments of inertia and friction coefficients, suggesting that the transfer of power between different parts of the ensemble can be manipulated by a convenient choice of the individual parameters.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2021

Emergent parametric resonances and time-crystal phases in driven BCS systems

We study the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer condensate subject to a periodic drive. We demonstrate that the combined effect of drive and interactions results in emerging parametric resonances, analogous to a vertically driving pendulum. In particular, Arnold tongues appear when the driving frequency matches $2Δ_0/n$, with $n$ a natural number, and $Δ_0$ the equilibrium gap parameter. Inside the Arnold tongues we find a commensurate time-crystal condensate which retains the $U(1)$ symmetry breaking of the parent superfluid/superconducting phase and shows an additional time-translational symmetry breaking. Outside these tongues, the synchronized collective Higgs mode found in quench protocols is stabilized without the need of a strong perturbation. Our results are directly relevant to cold-atom and condensed-matter systems and do not require very long energy relaxation times to be observed.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Fat Tails and Black Swans: Exact Results for Multiplicative Processes with Resets

We consider a class of multiplicative processes which, added with stochastic reset events, give origin to stationary distributions with power-law tails -- ubiquitous in the statistics of social, economic, and ecological systems. Our main goal is to provide a series of exact results on the dynamics and asymptotic behaviour of increasingly complex versions of a basic multiplicative process with resets, including discrete and continuous-time variants and several degrees of randomness in the parameters that control the process. In particular, we show how the power-law distributions are built up as time elapses, how their moments behave with time, and how their stationary profiles become quantitatively determined by those parameters. Our discussion emphasizes the connection with financial systems, but these stochastic processes are also expected to be fruitful in modeling a wide variety of social and biological phenomena.

q-fin.ST↗

arXiv2021

Individual risk-aversion responses tune epidemics to critical transmissibility ($R=1$)

Changes in human behavior are increasingly recognized as a major determinant of epidemic dynamics. Although collective activity can be modified through imposed measures to control epidemic progression, spontaneous changes can also arise as a result of uncoordinated individual responses to the perceived risk of contagion. Here we introduce a stochastic epidemic model that implements population responses driven by individual- and time-dependent risk-taking propensity. The model reveals an emergent mechanism for the generation of multiple infection waves of decreasing amplitude without the need to consider external modulation of parameters. Successive waves tune the effective reproduction number to its critical value $R=1$. This process is a consequence of the interplay of the fractions of susceptible and infected population and the average risk-taking propensity, as shown by a mean-field approach. The proposed mechanism also shows how, under the threat of contagion, the distribution of individual risk propensities evolves towards a well-defined profile. Successive waves trigger selective sweeps of risk-taking propensity at a pace determined by individual risk reaction rates. This kind of collective, self-generated pressure, may therefore shape risk-aversion profiles associated to epidemics in human groups. The final state is self-organized and generic, independent of the parameter values. We conclude that uncoordinated changes in human behavior can, by themselves, explain major qualitative and quantitative features of the epidemic process, as the emergence of multiple waves and the tendency to remain around $R=1$ observed worldwide after the first few waves of COVID-19.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2020

Heaps' law and Heaps functions in tagged texts: Evidences of their linguistic relevance

We study the relationship between vocabulary size and text length in a corpus of $75$ literary works in English, authored by six writers, distinguishing between the contributions of three grammatical classes (or ``tags,'' namely, {\it nouns}, {\it verbs}, and {\it others}), and analyze the progressive appearance of new words of each tag along each individual text. While the power-law relation prescribed by Heaps' law is satisfactorily fulfilled by total vocabulary sizes and text lengths, the appearance of new words in each text is on the whole well described by the average of random shufflings of the text, which does not obey a power law. Deviations from this average, however, are statistically significant and show a systematic trend across the corpus. Specifically, they reveal that the appearance of new words along each text is predominantly retarded with respect to the average of random shufflings. Moreover, different tags are shown to add systematically distinct contributions to this tendency, with {\it verbs} and {\it others} being respectively more and less retarded than the mean trend, and {\it nouns} following instead this overall mean. These statistical systematicities are likely to point to the existence of linguistically relevant information stored in the different variants of Heaps' law, a feature that is still in need of extensive assessment.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2017

Statistical Patterns in Written Language

Quantitative linguistics has been allowed, in the last few decades, within the admittedly blurry boundaries of the field of complex systems. A growing host of applied mathematicians and statistical physicists devote their efforts to disclose regularities, correlations, patterns, and structural properties of language streams, using techniques borrowed from statistics and information theory. Overall, results can still be categorized as modest, but the prospects are promising: medium- and long-range features in the organization of human language -which are beyond the scope of traditional linguistics- have already emerged from this kind of analysis and continue to be reported, contributing a new perspective to our understanding of this most complex communication system. This short book is intended to review some of these recent contributions.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2016

Self-sustained micromechanical oscillator with linear feedback

Autonomous oscillators, such as clocks and lasers, produce periodic signals \emph{without} any external frequency reference. In order to sustain stable periodic motions, there needs to be external energy supply as well as nonlinearity built into the oscillator to regulate the amplitude. Usually, nonlinearity is provided by the sustaining feedback mechanism, which also supplies energy, whereas the constituent resonator that determines the output frequency stays linear. Here we propose a new self-sustaining scheme that relies on the nonlinearity originating from the resonator itself to limit the oscillation amplitude, while the feedback remains linear. We introduce a model to describe the working principle of the self-sustained oscillations and validate it with experiments performed on a nonlinear microelectromechanical (MEMS) based oscillator.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Direct observation of coherent energy transfer in nonlinear micro-mechanical oscillators

Energy dissipation is an unavoidable phenomenon of physical systems that are directly coupled to an external environmental bath. The ability to engineer the processes responsible for dissipation and coupling is fundamental to manipulate the state of such systems. This is particularly important in oscillatory states whose dynamic response is used for many applications, e.g. micro and nano-mechanical resonators or sensing and timing, qubits for quantum engineering, and vibrational modes for optomechanical devices. In situations where stable oscillations are required, the energy dissipated by the vibrational modes is usually compensated by replenishment from external energy sources. Consequently, if the external energy supply is removed, the amplitude of oscillations start to decay immediately, since there is no means to restitute the energy dissipated. Here, we demonstrate a novel strategy to maintain stable oscillations, i.e. with constant amplitude and frequency, without supplying external energy to compensate losses. The fundamental intrinsic mechanism of mode coupling is used to redistribute and store mechanical energy among vibrational modes and coherently transfer it back to the principal mode when the external excitation is off. To experimentally demonstrate this phenomenon that defies physical intuition, we exploit the nonlinear dynamic response of microelectromechanical (MEMS) oscillators to couple two different vibrational modes through an internal resonance. Since the underlying mechanism describing the fundamentals of this new phenomenon is generic and representative of a large variety of systems, the presented method provides a new dissipation engineering strategy that would enable a new generation of autonomous devices.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2016

Frequency stabilization by synchronization of Duffing oscillators

We present analytical and numerical results on the joint dynamics of two coupled Duffing oscillators with nonlinearity of opposite signs (hardening and softening). In particular, we focus on the existence and stability of synchronized oscillations where the frequency is independent of the amplitude. In this regime, the amplitude--frequency interdependence (a--f effect) ---a noxious consequence of nonlinearity, which jeopardizes the use of micromechanical oscillators in the design of time--keeping devices--- is suppressed. By means of a multiple time scale formulation, we find approximate conditions under which frequency stabilization is achieved, characterize the stability of the resulting oscillations, and compare with numerical solutions to the equations of motion.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2015

Non-Payoff Monotonic Dynamics in an Evolutionary Game of Courtship

We propose an evolutionary coordination game to formalize a simplified model of the evolution of strategies during human courtship. The dynamics, derived from the consideration of experimental observations on human social behavior driven by self-esteem, turns out to be non-payoff monotonic. This property gives rise to nontrivial evolution in the players' strategies, which we study both numerically and analytically.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2015

Information-theoretical analysis of the statistical dependencies among three variables: Applications to written language

We develop the information-theoretical concepts required to study the statistical dependencies among three variables. Some of such dependencies are pure triple interactions, in the sense that they cannot be explained in terms of a combination of pairwise correlations. We derive bounds for triple dependencies, and characterize the shape of the joint probability distribution of three binary variables with high triple interaction. The analysis also allows us to quantify the amount of redundancy in the mutual information between pairs of variables, and to assess whether the information between two variables is or is not mediated by a third variable. These concepts are applied to the analysis of written texts. We find that the probability that a given word is found in a particular location within the text is not only modulated by the presence or absence of other nearby words, but also, on the presence or absence of nearby pairs of words. We identify the words enclosing the key semantic concepts of the text, the triplets of words with high pairwise and triple interactions, and the words that mediate the pairwise interactions between other words.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2015

Duffing revisited: Phase-shift control and internal resonance in self-sustained oscillators

We address two aspects of the dynamics of the forced Duffing oscillator which are relevant to the technology of micromechanical devices and, at the same time, have intrinsic significance to the field of nonlinear oscillating systems. First, we study the stability of periodic motion when the phase shift between the external force and the oscillation is controlled -contrary to the standard case, where the control parameter is the frequency of the force. Phase-shift control is the operational configuration under which self-sustained oscillators -and, in particular, micromechanical oscillators- provide a frequency reference useful for time keeping. We show that, contrary to the standard forced Duffing oscillator, under phase-shift control oscillations are stable over the whole resonance curve. Second, we analyze a model for the internal resonance between the main Duffing oscillation mode and a higher-harmonic mode of a vibrating solid bar clamped at its two ends. We focus on the stabilization of the oscillation frequency when the resonance takes place, and present preliminary experimental results that illustrate the phenomenon. This synchronization process has been proposed to counteract the undesirable frequency-amplitude interdependence in nonlinear time-keeping micromechanical devices.

physics.class-ph↗