arXiv subjects

Jeferson J. Arenzon

Publications and source records attributed to Jeferson J. Arenzon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Coarsening in the long-range Persistent Voter Model

We investigate the coarsening kinetics in a long-range variant of the Persistent Voter Model in space dimensions $d=1$ and 2. In this model, agents can hold two confidence levels, normal and zealot. Normal agents imitate another opinion chosen at a distance $r$ with probability $P(r) \propto r^{-α}$, with $α>d$. On the contrary, while in the zealot state, agents keep their own opinion. Normal (zealot) agents can become zealots (normal) if their opinion is equal (different) to that of the chosen neighbour. Through numerical simulations we show that, for any values of $α$, the model belongs to the same universality class of the long-range Ising model quenched to a small (non-zero) temperature, similarly to what was already known for the nearest-neighbor case. For the one-dimensional case, we further develop an analytical treatment, which reproduces the $α$-dependence of the correlation length and the functional form of the correlation function. These results not only confirm that the introduction of opinion inertia mitigates the strong interfacial noise present in the Voter model, thus reinstating the basic kinetic mechanism of the Ising model, but also expand the applicability of this correspondence.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2026

Universal Coarsening and Giant-Cluster Formation in Growing Interfaces

Clusters formed by fluctuations of two-dimensional (2D) directed interfaces around a threshold level have been extensively studied at equilibrium and in nonequilibrium steady states, but their coarsening dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we numerically investigate this unexplored coarsening of clusters in 2D growing interfaces believed to belong to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. Using a two-point spatial correlator, we demonstrate statistical time invariance of the evolving configurations and identify scaling forms shared across distinct models. We reveal a pronounced asymmetry in the growth of the largest clusters: one cluster emerges as a giant structure whose characteristic length exceeds the correlation length. Population-dependent scaling forms for the number densities of cluster areas are uncovered. These findings highlight new universal aspects of growing interfaces and suggest avenues for experimental verification.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2025

Critical clusters in liquid crystals: Fractal geometry and conformal invariance

We study the two-dimensional domain morphology of twisted nematic liquid crystals during their phase-ordering kinetics [R. A. L. Almeida, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131 (2023) 268101], which is a physical candidate to self-generate critical clusters in the percolation universality class. Here we present experimental evidence that large clusters and their hulls are indeed both fractals with dimensions of the corresponding figures in critical percolation models. The asymptotic decay of a crossing probability, from a region in the vicinity of the origin to the boundary of disks, is described by the Lawler-Schramm-Werner theorem provided that a microscopic length in the original formulation is replaced by the coarsening length of the liquid crystal. Furthermore, the behavior for the winding angle of large loops is, at certain scales, compatible with that of Schramm-Loewner evolution curves with diffusivity $κ= 6$. These results show an experimental realization of critical clusters in phase ordering.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Opinion inertia and coarsening in the Persistent Voter model

We consider the Persistent Voter model (PVM), a variant of the Voter model (VM) that includes transient, dynamically-induced zealots. Due to peer reinforcement, the internal confidence $η_i$ of a normal voter increases by steps of size $Δη$ and once it gets above a given threshold, it becomes a zealot. Then, its opinion remains frozen until enough interactions with the opposite opinion occur and its confidence is reset. No longer a zealot, the regular voter may change opinion once again. This opinion inertia mechanism, albeit simplified, is responsible for an effective surface tension and the PVM has a crossover from a fluctuation-driven dynamics, as in the VM, to a curvature-driven one, as in the Ising Model at low temperature (IM0). The average time $τ$ to attain consensus is non-monotonic on $Δη$ and has a minimum at $Δη_{\min}$. In this paper we clarify the mechanisms that accelerate the system towards consensus close to $Δη_{\min}$. Close to the crossover at $Δη_{\min}$, the intermediate region around the domains where the regular voters accumulate (the active region, AR) is large and the surface tension, albeit small, is still enough to keep the shape and reduce the fragmentation of the domains. The large size of the AR in the region of $Δη_{\min}$ has two important effects that accelerates the dynamics. First, it dislodges the zealots in the bulk of the domains and second, it maximally suppresses the slowly-evolving stripes that normally form in Ising-like models. This suggests the importance of understanding the role of the AR, where the change of opinion is facilitated, and the interplay between regular voters and zealots when attempting to disrupt polarized states.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2023

Emergent cooperative behavior in transient compartments

We introduce a minimal model of multilevel selection on structured populations, considering the interplay between game theory and population dynamics. Through a bottleneck process, finite groups are formed with cooperators and defectors sampled from an infinite pool. After the fragmentation, these transient compartments grow until the carrying capacity is attained. Eventually, all compartments are merged, well mixed and the whole process is repeated. We show that cooperators, even if interacting only through mean-field intra-group interactions that favor defectors, may perform well because of the inter-group competition and the size diversity among the compartments. These cycles of isolation and coalescence may therefore be important in maintaining diversity among different species or strategies and may help to understand the underlying mechanisms of the scaffolding processes in the transition to multicellularity.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2022

Energy-lowering and constant-energy spin flips: Emergence of the percolating cluster in the kinetic Ising model

After a sudden quench from the disordered high-temperature $T_0\to\infty$ phase to a final temperature below the critical point $T_F \ll T_c$, the non-conserved order parameter dynamics of the two-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising model on a square lattice (2dIM) initially approaches the critical percolation state before entering the coarsening regime. This approach involves two timescales associated with the first appearance (at time $t_{{\rm p}_1}>0$) and stabilization (at time $t_{\rm p}>t_{{\rm p}_1}$) of a giant percolation cluster, as previously reported. However, the microscopic mechanisms that control such timescales are not yet fully understood. In this paper, in order to study their role on each time regime after the quench ($T_F=0$), we distinguish between spin flips that decrease the total energy of the system from those that keep it constant, the latter being parametrized by the probability $p$. We show that the cluster size heterogeneity $H(t,p)$ and the typical domain size $\ell (t,p)$ have no dependence on $p$ in the first time regime up to $t_{{\rm p}_1}$. On the other hand, the time for stabilizing a percolating cluster is controlled by the acceptance probability of constant-energy flips: $t_{\rm p}(p) \sim p^{-1}$ for $p\ll 1$ (at $p=0$, the dynamics gets stuck in a metastable state). These flips are also the relevant ones in the later coarsening regime where dynamical scaling takes place. Because the phenomenology on the approach to the percolation point seems to be shared by many 2d systems with a non-conserved order parameter dynamics (and certain cases of conserved ones as well), our results may suggest a simple and effective way to set, through the dynamics itself, $t_{{\rm p}_1}$ and $t_{\rm p}$ in such systems.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2022

Curvature-driven growth and interfacial noise in the voter model with self-induced zealots

We introduce a variant of the voter model in which agents may have different degrees of confidence on their opinions. Those with low confidence are normal voters whose state can change upon a single contact with a different neighboring opinion. However, confidence increases with opinion reinforcement and, above a certain threshold, these agents become zealots that do not change opinion. We show that both strategies, normal voters and zealots, may coexist, leading to a competition between two different kinetic mechanisms: curvature-driven growth and interfacial noise. The kinetically constrained zealots are formed well inside the clusters, away from the different opinions at the surfaces that help keep the confidence not so high. Normal voters concentrate in a region around the interfaces and their number, that is related with the distance between the surface and the zealotry bulk, depends on the rate the confidence changes. Despite this interface being rough and fragmented, typical of the voter model, the presence of zealots in the bulk of these domains, induces a curvature-driven dynamics, similar to the low temperature coarsening behavior of the non-conserved Ising model after a temperature quench.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

A branching random-walk model of disease outbreaks and the percolation backbone

The size and shape of the region affected by an outbreak is relevant to understand the dynamics of a disease and help to organize future actions to mitigate similar events. A simple extension of the SIR model is considered, where agents diffuse on a regular lattice and the disease may be transmitted when an infected and a susceptible agents are nearest neighbors. We study the geometric properties of both the connected cluster of sites visited by infected agents (outbreak cluster) and the set of clusters with sites that have not been visited. By changing the density of agents, our results show that there is a mixed-order (hybrid) transition where the region affected by the disease is finite in one phase but percolates through the system beyond the threshold. Moreover, the outbreak cluster seems to have the same exponents of the backbone of the critical cluster of the ordinary percolation while the clusters with unvisited sites have a size distribution with a Fisher exponent $τ<2$.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2021

Maximal Diversity and Zipf's Law

Zipf's law describes the empirical size distribution of the components of many systems in natural and social sciences and humanities. We show, by solving a statistical model, that Zipf's law co-occurs with the maximization of the diversity of the component sizes. The law ruling the increase of such diversity with the total dimension of the system is derived and its relation with Heaps' law is discussed. As an example, we show that our analytical results compare very well with linguistics datasets.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Skepticism and rumor spreading: the role of spatial correlations

Critical thinking and skepticism are fundamental mechanisms that one may use to prevent the spreading of rumors, fake-news and misinformation. We consider a simple model in which agents without previous contact with the rumor, being skeptically oriented, may convince spreaders to stop their activity or, once exposed to the rumor, decide not to propagate it as a consequence, for example, of fact-checking. We extend a previous, mean-field analysis of the combined effect of these two mechanisms, active and passive skepticism, to include spatial correlations. This can be done either analytically, through the pair approximation, or simulating an agent-based version on diverse networks. Our results show that while in mean-field there is no coexistence between spreaders and susceptibles (although, depending on the parameters, there may be bistability depending on the initial conditions), when spatial correlations are included, because of the protective effect of the isolation provided by removed agents, coexistence is possible.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2019

Dynamical cluster size heterogeneity

Only recently the essential role of the percolation critical point has been considered on the dynamical properties of connected regions of aligned spins (domains) after a sudden temperature quench. In equilibrium, it is possible to resolve the contribution to criticality by the thermal and percolative effects (on finite lattices, while in the thermodynamic limit they merge at a single critical temperature) by studying the cluster size heterogeneity, $H_{\scriptstyle\rm eq}(T)$, a measure of how different the domains are in size. We here extend this equilibrium measure and study its temporal evolution, $H(t)$, after driving the system out of equilibrium by a sudden quench in temperature. We show that this single parameter is able to detect and well separate the different time regimes, related to the two time scales in the problem, the short, percolative and the long, coarsening one.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Rumor propagation meets skepticism: a parallel with zombies

We propose a model of rumor spreading in which susceptible, but skeptically oriented individuals may oppose the rumor. Resistance may be implemented either by skeptical activists trying to convince spreaders to stop their activity, becoming stiflers or, passively (non-reactive) as a consequence, for example, of fact-checking. Interestingly, these two mechanisms, when combined, are similar to the (assumed) spreading of a fictitious zombie outbreak, where survivors actively target infected people. We analyse the well-mixed (mean-field) description and obtain the conditions for rumors (zombies) to spread through the whole population. The results show that when the skepticism is strong enough, the model predicts the coexistence of two fixed points (such bistability may be related to polarized situations), with the fate of rumors depending on the initial exposure to it.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2018

Unconventional cycles, pseudoadiabatics and multiple adiabatic points

Unconventional cycles provide a useful didactic resource to discuss the second law of thermodynamics applied to thermal motors and their efficiency. In most cases they involve a negative slope, linear process that presents an adiabatic point where the process is tangent to an adiabatic curve and $δQ=0$, signalling that the flow of heat is reversed. We introduce a parabolic process, still simple enough to be fully explored analitically in order to deal with the usual follow up question on the possibility of having more than one adiabatic point. Having one (linear), two (parabolic) or more such points allow the construction of reversible, non-isoentropic processes, that we call pseudoadiabatics, whose total heat exchanged is zero.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2017

Spatial organization and cyclic dominance in asymmetric predator-prey spatial games

Predators may attack isolated or grouped prey in a cooperative, collective way. Whether a gregarious behavior is advantageous to each species depends on several conditions and game theory is a useful tool to deal with such a problem. We here extend the Lett-Auger-Gaillard model [Theor. Pop. Biol. 65 (2004) 263] to spatially distributed populations and compare the resulting behavior with their mean-field predictions for the coevolving densities of predator and prey strategies. Besides its richer behavior in the presence of spatial organization, we also show that the coexistence phase in which collective and individual strategies for each group are present is stable because of an effective, cyclic dominance mechanism similar to a well-studied generalization of the Rock-Paper-Scissors game with four species, a further example of how ubiquitous this coexistence mechanism is.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2016

Competing nematic interactions in a generalized XY model in two and three dimensions

We study a generalization of the XY model with an additional nematic-like term through extensive numerical simulations and finite-size techniques, both in two and three dimensions. While the original model favors local alignment, the extra term induces angles of $2π/q$ between neighboring spins. We focus here on the $q=8$ case (while presenting new results for other values of $q$ as well) whose phase diagram is much richer than the well known $q=2$ case. In particular, the model presents not only continuous, standard transitions between Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phases as in $q=2$, but also infinite order transitions involving intermediate, competition driven phases absent for $q=2$ and 3. Besides presenting multiple transitions, our results show that having vortices decoupling at a transition is not a suficient condition for it to be of BKT type.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2015

Spatial social dilemmas: dilution, mobility and grouping effects with imitation dynamics

We present an extensive, systematic study of the Prisoner's Dilemma and Snowdrift games on a square lattice under a synchronous, noiseless imitation dynamics. We show that for both the occupancy of the network and the (random) mobility of the agents there are intermediate values that may increase the amount of cooperators in the system and new phases appear. We analytically determine the transition lines between these phases and compare with the mean field prediction and the observed behavior on a square lattice. We point out which are the more relevant microscopic processes that entitle cooperators to invade a population of defectors in the presence of mobility and discuss the universality of these results.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2015

Domain size heterogeneity in the Ising model: geometrical and thermal transitions

A measure of cluster size heterogeneity ($H$), introduced by Lee et al [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 84}, 020101 (2011)] in the context of explosive percolation, was recently applied to random percolation and to domains of parallel spins in the Ising and Potts models. It is defined as the average number of different domain sizes in a given configuration and a new exponent was introduced to explain its scaling with the size of the system. In thermal spin models, however, physical clusters take into account the temperature-dependent correlation between neighboring spins and encode the critical properties of the phase transition. We here extend the measure of $H$ to these clusters and, moreover, present new results for the geometric domains for both $d=2$ and 3. We show that the heterogeneity associated with geometric domains has a previously unnoticed double peak, thus being able to detect both the thermal and percolative transition. An alternative interpretation for the scaling of $H$ that does not introduce a new exponent is also proposed.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2014

Slicing the $3d$ Ising model: critical equilibrium and coarsening dynamics

We study the evolution of spin clusters on two dimensional slices of the $3d$ Ising model in contact with a heat bath after a sudden quench to a subcritical temperature. We analyze the evolution of some simple initial configurations, such as a sphere and a torus, of one phase embedded into the other, to confirm that their area disappears linearly in time and to establish the temperature dependence of the prefactor in each case. Two generic kinds of initial states are later used: equilibrium configurations either at infinite temperature or at the paramagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition. We investigate the morphological domain structure of the coarsening configurations on $2d$ slices of the $3d$ system, comparing with the behavior of the bidimensional model.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗