Nonequilibrium systems, as physical systems, are characterized by the absence of thermodynamic equilibrium, typically involving persistent fluxes of matter, energy, or momentum, and non-vanishing thermodynamic forces such as gradients of temperature, chemical potential, or velocity. Their macroscopic behavior cannot be fully described by equilibrium statistical mechanics, requiring frameworks like nonequilibrium thermodynamics, kinetic theory, and stochastic processes. These systems may exhibit time-dependent evolution, dissipation, entropy production, and emergent structures (e.g., patterns or self-organization) sustained by external driving. Nonequilibrium conditions are fundamental in transport phenomena, reaction–diffusion processes, driven granular media, active matter, and many open systems exchanging energy or particles with their environment.
Quantum states are notoriously fragile, and can be destroyed simply through interactions, measurements, and exposure to their surrounding environments. In a new theoretical study published in Physical Review X, Rohan Mittal ...
Physicists have developed a new theoretical framework which unifies a wide array of seemingly unrelated "Mpemba effects": counterintuitive cases where systems driven further from equilibrium relax faster than those closer ...
Living cells are fundamentally nonequilibrium systems, meaning they constantly spend energy through seemingly one-way, irreversible processes, such as transcribing DNA into RNA, to keep life going. But how that irreversibility ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 22, 2026
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Glass appears to be a solid, but in theory it sometimes behaves more like an extremely slow liquid. Physicists in Utrecht now show that glass-like structures can also exist in equilibrium, which is something many theories ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 18, 2026
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An international research team led by Alexander Kuznetsov at the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics (PDI) in Berlin has demonstrated a fundamentally new way to control the condensation of hybrid light-matter ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 11, 2026
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35
"Glass" has a unique and distinct meaning in physics—one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and ...
Soft Matter
Mar 2, 2026
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The types of glass that we encounter in everyday life, such as window glass or smartphone screens, are disordered solids. This means that they consist of particles locked in place, like those in solids, but arranged randomly, ...
Preserving quantum information is key to developing useful quantum computing systems. But interacting quantum systems are chaotic and follow laws of thermodynamics, eventually leading to information loss. Physicists have ...
Quantum Physics
Feb 27, 2026
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Technologies for energy storage as well as biological systems such as the network of neurons in the brain depend on driven electrolytes that are traveling in an electric field due to their electrical charges. This concept ...
Bio & Medicine
Feb 12, 2026
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35
In order to build the computers and devices of tomorrow, we have to understand how they use energy today. That's harder than it sounds. Memory storage, information processing, and energy use in these technologies involve ...
General Physics
Feb 9, 2026
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