arXiv subjects

Pablo A. Morales

Publications and source records attributed to Pablo A. Morales.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Curvature Converts Phonon Hall Viscosity into Phonon Angular Momentum

In a flat crystalline membrane, the low-energy spectrum is dominated by a flexural mode that does not couple to phonon Hall viscosity. We show that static curvature converts normal motion into in-plane strain and thereby opens a Hall-active flexural channel. Tracefree curvature couples directly to Hall-active shear, while mean curvature acts indirectly through the shear generated by ordinary in-plane elasticity. Together, these channels generate in-plane phonon angular momentum along the surface normal. For statistically isotropic shallow ripples, the time average has a definite sign fixed by the Hall viscosity, producing a steady field-odd torque proportional to the mean-square curvature. Using the measured bulk Hall viscosity of $α$-RuCl$_3$ to set the scale, we estimate a torque of order $10^{-22}\,\mathrm{N\,m}$ for a few-layer membrane, within reach of demonstrated torsional sensors. The same flexural-to-shear response provides a probe of phonon Hall viscosity in atomically thin crystals.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Curvature-Controlled Infrared Regularization of Crystalline Membranes

We show that negative Gaussian curvature regularizes the infrared sector of crystalline membranes. In a covariant formulation of embedded elasticity, the Green strain contains a symmetry-required linear coupling between the normal phonon field and extrinsic curvature. Integrating out the in-plane phonons converts this coupling into a finite quadratic contribution to the inverse flexural response. Anomalous roughening is thereby replaced by curvature-controlled saturation, and the mechanism survives on minimal hyperbolic patches. Hyperbolic geometry preempts anomalous elasticity before the flat infrared regime is reached, implying the absence of a crumpling phase at the harmonic level. The same Gaussian-order coupling admits sound propagation in the infrared.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

An Information-Geometric Approach to Artificial Curiosity

Learning in environments with sparse rewards remains a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning. Artificial curiosity addresses this limitation through intrinsic rewards to guide exploration, however, the precise formulation of these rewards has remained elusive. Ideally, such rewards should depend on the agent's information about the environment, remaining agnostic to its representation -- an invariance central to information geometry. Leveraging this, we show that information monotonicity and invariance under the agent-environment interaction uniquely constrains intrinsic rewards to strictly concave functions of the reciprocal occupancy. Requiring these rewards to yield a principled exploration-exploitation trade-off, via information geodesic interpolation on the occupancy manifold, effectively limits the candidates to those determined by a scalar parameter. Remarkably, special values of this parameter are found to correspond to count-based and maximum entropy exploration. This framework provides important constraints to the engineering of intrinsic rewards while integrating foundational exploration methods into a single, cohesive model.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

Explosive neural networks via higher-order interactions in curved statistical manifolds

Higher-order interactions underlie complex phenomena in systems such as biological and artificial neural networks, but their study is challenging due to the scarcity of tractable models. By leveraging a generalisation of the maximum entropy principle, we introduce curved neural networks as a class of models with a limited number of parameters that are particularly well-suited for studying higher-order phenomena. Through exact mean-field descriptions, we show that these curved neural networks implement a self-regulating annealing process that can accelerate memory retrieval, leading to explosive order-disorder phase transitions with multi-stability and hysteresis effects. Moreover, by analytically exploring their memory-retrieval capacity using the replica trick, we demonstrate that these networks can enhance memory capacity and robustness of retrieval over classical associative-memory networks. Overall, the proposed framework provides parsimonious models amenable to analytical study, revealing higher-order phenomena in complex networks.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2025

Thermodynamics of exponential Kolmogorov-Nagumo averages

This paper investigates generalized thermodynamic relationships in physical systems where relevant macroscopic variables are determined by the exponential Kolmogorov-Nagumo average. We show that while the thermodynamic entropy of such systems is naturally described by Rényi's entropy with parameter $γ$, an ordinary Boltzmann distribution still describes their statistics under equilibrium thermodynamics. Our results show that systems described by exponential Kolmogorov-Nagumo averages can be interpreted as systems originally in thermal equilibrium with a heat reservoir with inverse temperature $β$ that are suddenly quenched to another heat reservoir with inverse temperature $β' = (1-γ)β$. Furthermore, we show the connection with multifractal thermodynamics. For the non-equilibrium case, we show that the dynamics of systems described by exponential Kolmogorov-Nagumo averages still observe a second law of thermodynamics and the H-theorem. We further discuss the applications of stochastic thermodynamics in those systems -- namely, the validity of fluctuation theorems -- and the connection with thermodynamic length. namic length.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2024

Graphene shapes from quantum elasticity

Temperature constraints are highly desirable in the experimental setup when seeking the synthesis of new carbon structures. Fluctuations of the Dirac field result in temperature-dependent corrections to the Helfrich-Canham formulation, which governs the classical elasticity of the graphene membrane at equilibrium. Here, we examine the emergent shapes allowed by the effective model up to quadratic order in Ricci curvature and discuss the constraints required to observe them. We determine the mechanical stability conditions and provide a phase diagram characterized by the appearance of a critical temperature $T_{\rm c}$ that distinguishes between carbon nanotube and fullerene phases. The observation of minimal and developable surfaces is anticipated in the high- and low-temperature regimes, respectively. Additionally, a Beltrami trumpet surface is forecasted when the membrane is subjected to an external source balancing out internal Helfrich stresses.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Geometric Structures Induced by Deformations of the Legendre Transform

The recent link discovered between generalized Legendre transforms and non-dually flat statistical manifolds suggests a fundamental reason behind the ubiquity of Rényi's divergence and entropy in a wide range of physical phenomena. However, these early findings still provide little intuition on the nature of this relationship and its implications for physical systems. Here we shed new light on the Legendre transform by revealing the consequences of its deformation via symplectic geometry and complexification. These findings reveal a novel common framework that leads to a principled and unified understanding of physical systems that are not well-described by classic information-theoretic quantities.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Curvature-induced pseudogauge fields from time-dependent geometries in graphene

The massless Dirac equation is studied in curved spacetime on the (2+1)-dimensional graphene sheet in time-dependent geometries. Emergent pseudogauge fields are found both in the adiabatic regime and, for high-frequency periodic geometries, in the nonadiabatic regime for a generic Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric in Fermi normal coordinates. The former extends the conventionally understood homogeneous pseudogauge field to include weak temporal inhomogeneities. The latter, through the usage of Floquet theory, represents a new class of emergent pseudogauge field and is argued to potentially provide a condensed matter realization of cosmological high-frequency geometries.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

A generalization of the maximum entropy principle for curved statistical manifolds

The maximum entropy principle (MEP) is one of the most prominent methods to investigate and model complex systems. Despite its popularity, the standard form of the MEP can only generate Boltzmann-Gibbs distributions, which are ill-suited for many scenarios of interest. As a principled approach to extend the reach of the MEP, this paper revisits its foundations in information geometry and shows how the geometry of curved statistical manifolds naturally leads to a generalization of the MEP based on the Rényi entropy. By establishing a bridge between non-Euclidean geometry and the MEP, our proposal sets a solid foundation for the numerous applications of the Rényi entropy, and enables a range of novel methods for complex systems analysis.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2017

Field Theory of the Eulerian Perfect Fluid

The Eulerian perfect-fluid theory is reformulated from its action principle in a pure field-theoretic manner. Conservation of the convective current is no longer imposed by Lin's constraints, but rather adopted as the central idea of the theory. Our formulation, for the first time, successfully reduces redundant degrees of freedom promoting one half of the Clebsch variables as the true dynamical fields. Interactions on these fields allow for the exchange of the convective current of quantities such as mass and charge, which are uniformly understood as the breaking of the underlying symmetry of the force-free fluid. The Clebsch fields play the essential role in the exchange of angular momentum with the force field producing vorticity.

hep-th↗