Real-space observation of ergodicity transitions in artificial spin ice.

Ever since its introduction by Ludwig Boltzmann, the ergodic hypothesis became a cornerstone analytical concept of equilibrium thermodynamics and complex dynamic processes. Examples of its relevance range from modeling decision-making processes in brain science to economic predictions. In condensed matter physics, ergodicity remains a concept largely investigated via theoretical and computational models. Here, we demonstrate the direct real-space observation of ergodicity transitions in a vertex-frustrated artificial spin ice. Using synchrotron-based photoemission electron microscopy we record thermally-driven moment fluctuations as a function of temperature, allowing us to directly observe transitions between ergodicity-breaking dynamics to system freezing, standing in contrast to simple trends observed for the temperature-dependent vertex populations, all while the entropy features arise as a function of temperature. These results highlight how a geometrically frustrated system, with thermodynamics strictly adhering to local ice-rule constraints, runs back-and-forth through periods of ergodicity-breaking dynamics. Ergodicity breaking and the emergence of memory is important for emergent computation, particularly in physical reservoir computing. Our work serves as further evidence of how fundamental laws of thermodynamics can be experimentally explored via real-space imaging.

Computational capacity of LRC, memristive, and hybrid reservoirs.

Reservoir computing is a machine learning paradigm that uses a high-dimensional dynamical system, or reservoir, to approximate and predict time series data. The scale, speed, and power usage of reservoir computers could be enhanced by constructing reservoirs out of electronic circuits, and several experimental studies have demonstrated promise in this direction. However, designing quality reservoirs requires a precise understanding of how such circuits process and store information. We analyze the feasibility and optimal design of electronic reservoirs that include both linear elements (resistors, inductors, and capacitors) and nonlinear memory elements called memristors. We provide analytic results regarding the feasibility of these reservoirs and give a systematic characterization of their computational properties by examining the types of input-output relationships that they can approximate. This allows us to design reservoirs with optimal properties. By introducing measures of the total linear and nonlinear computational capacities of the reservoir, we are able to design electronic circuits whose total computational capacity scales extensively with the system size. Our electronic reservoirs can match or exceed the performance of conventional "echo state network" reservoirs in a form that may be directly implemented in hardware.

Reconfigurable training and reservoir computing in an artificial spin-vortex ice via spin-wave fingerprinting.

Strongly interacting artificial spin systems are moving beyond mimicking naturally occurring materials to emerge as versatile functional platforms, from reconfigurable magnonics to neuromorphic computing. Typically, artificial spin systems comprise nanomagnets with a single magnetization texture: collinear macrospins or chiral vortices. By tuning nanoarray dimensions we have achieved macrospin-vortex bistability and demonstrated a four-state metamaterial spin system, the 'artificial spin-vortex ice' (ASVI). ASVI can host Ising-like macrospins with strong ice-like vertex interactions and weakly coupled vortices with low stray dipolar field. Vortices and macrospins exhibit starkly differing spin-wave spectra with analogue mode amplitude control and mode frequency shifts of Δf = 3.8 GHz. The enhanced bitextural microstate space gives rise to emergent physical memory phenomena, with ratchet-like vortex injection and history-dependent non-linear fading memory when driven through global magnetic field cycles. We employed spin-wave microstate fingerprinting for rapid, scalable readout of vortex and macrospin populations, and leveraged this for spin-wave reservoir computation. ASVI performs non-linear mapping transformations of diverse input and target signals in addition to chaotic time-series forecasting.

How production networks amplify economic growth.

Technological improvement is the most important cause of long-term economic growth. In standard growth models, technology is treated in the aggregate, but an economy can also be viewed as a network in which producers buy goods, convert them to new goods, and sell the production to households or other producers. We develop predictions for how this network amplifies the effects of technological improvements as they propagate along chains of production, showing that longer production chains for an industry bias it toward faster price reduction and that longer production chains for a country bias it toward faster growth. These predictions are in good agreement with data from the World Input Output Database and improve with the passage of time. The results show that production chains play a major role in shaping the long-term evolution of prices, output growth, and structural change.

Global minimization via classical tunneling assisted by collective force field formation.

Simple elements interacting in networks can give rise to intricate emergent behaviors. Examples such as synchronization and phase transitions often apply in many contexts, as many different systems may reduce to the same effective model. Here, we demonstrate such a behavior in a model inspired by memristors. When weakly driven, the system is described by movement in an effective potential, but when strongly driven, instabilities cause escapes from local minima, which can be interpreted as an unstable tunneling mechanism. We dub this collective and nonperturbative effect a "Lyapunov force," which steers the system toward the global minimum of the potential function, even if the full system has a constellation of equilibrium points growing exponentially with the system size. This mechanism is appealing for its physical relevance in nanoscale physics and for its possible applications in optimization, Monte Carlo schemes, and machine learning.

Asymptotic Behavior of Memristive Circuits.

The interest in memristors has risen due to their possible application both as memory units and as computational devices in combination with CMOS. This is in part due to their nonlinear dynamics, and a strong dependence on the circuit topology. We provide evidence that also purely memristive circuits can be employed for computational purposes. In the present paper we show that a polynomial Lyapunov function in the memory parameters exists for the case of DC controlled memristors. Such a Lyapunov function can be asymptotically approximated with binary variables, and mapped to quadratic combinatorial optimization problems. This also shows a direct parallel between memristive circuits and the Hopfield-Little model. In the case of Erdos-Renyi random circuits, we show numerically that the distribution of the matrix elements of the projectors can be roughly approximated with a Gaussian distribution, and that it scales with the inverse square root of the number of elements. This provides an approximated but direct connection with the physics of disordered system and, in particular, of mean field spin glasses. Using this and the fact that the interaction is controlled by a projector operator on the loop space of the circuit. We estimate the number of stationary points of the approximate Lyapunov function and provide a scaling formula as an upper bound in terms of the circuit topology only.

Correction: Bounds on Transient Instability for Complex Ecosystems.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0157876.].

Bounds on Transient Instability for Complex Ecosystems.

Stability is a desirable property of complex ecosystems. If a community of interacting species is at a stable equilibrium point then it is able to withstand small perturbations to component species' abundances without suffering adverse effects. In ecology, the Jacobian matrix evaluated at an equilibrium point is known as the community matrix, which describes the population dynamics of interacting species. A system's asymptotic short- and long-term behaviour can be determined from eigenvalues derived from the community matrix. Here we use results from the theory of pseudospectra to describe intermediate, transient dynamics. We first recover the established result that the transition from stable to unstable dynamics includes a region of 'transient instability', where the effect of a small perturbation to species' abundances-to the population vector-is amplified before ultimately decaying. Then we show that the shift from stability to transient instability can be affected by uncertainty in, or small changes to, entries in the community matrix, and determine lower and upper bounds to the maximum amplitude of perturbations to the population vector. Of five different types of community matrix, we find that amplification is least severe when predator-prey interactions dominate. This analysis is relevant to other systems whose dynamics can be expressed in terms of the Jacobian matrix.

A simple proof of orientability in colored group field theory.

BACKGROUND: Group field theory is an emerging field at the boundary between Quantum Gravity, Statistical Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory and provides a path integral for the gluing of n-simplices. Colored group field theory has been introduced in order to improve the renormalizability of the theory and associates colors to the faces of the simplices. The theory of crystallizations is instead a field at the boundary between graph theory and combinatorial topology and deals with n-simplices as colored graphs. Several techniques have been introduced in order to study the topology of the pseudo-manifold associated to the colored graph. Although of the similarity between colored group field theory and the theory of crystallizations, the connection between the two fields has never been made explicit. FINDINGS: In this short note we use results from the theory of crystallizations to prove that color in group field theories guarantees orientability of the piecewise linear pseudo-manifolds associated to each graph generated perturbatively. CONCLUSIONS: Colored group field theories generate orientable pseudo-manifolds. The origin of orientability is the presence of two interaction vertices in the action of colored group field theories. In order to obtain the result, we made the connection between the theory of crystallizations and colored group field theory.