2025/09/09 by Emir Sezik, Henry Alston, Sezik, Emir +3
Computer Science · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Dynamics and Properties #Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Theoretical and Computational Physics
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.07619
openalex publication_date 2025/09/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Fluctuating pairwise interactions are understood to drive fluidlike states in dense biological systems. These states find a broad range of functionalities, such as directing growth during morphogenesis and forming aggregates with heightened mechanical response. However, a tractable model capturing the role of microscopic fluctuating interactions in these structural transitions is crucially lacking. Here, we study a p-spin model with fluctuating pairwise couplings (of strength Da and persistence time ta) as a schematic model for interaction-mediated fluidization. We find that while stronger fluctuations suppress the glass transition, more persistent fluctuations have the opposite effect. We identify the presence of an emergent fluctuation-dissipation relation at long times. We numerically extract the critical temperature Tg(Da,ta) from a scaling relation near the transition, illustrating how microscopic fluctuations control the glass transition.