Critical Phenomena

Criticality in Number Theoretical Systems
We make use of the Statistical Physics formalism to investigate the onset of phase transitions and criticality in number theoretic systems, i.e. systems whose elements are integers which interact according to arithmetic properties.

Key papers

Self-organized criticality in number theoretic systems

Physical Review Letters 101, 158702 (2008) pdf
Featured in Investigacion y Ciencia (spanish version of Scientific American)


Phase transitions in combinatorial systems

Bartolo Luque, Lucas Lacasa, Octavio Miramontes

Physical Review E 76, 010103 (R) (2007)


Lucas Lacasa, Bartolo Luque, Octavio Miramontes

New Journal of Physics 10 (2008) 023009


  • Phase transition in the Countdown problem

Lucas Lacasa, Bartolo Luque

Physical Review E 86, 010105(R) (2012)

Featured in Investigacion y Ciencia (spanish version of Scientific American)


  • Phase transitions in Number Theory: from the Birthday Problem to Sidon Sets

Bartolo Luque, Iván G. Torre, Lucas Lacasa

Physical Review E 88, 052119 (2013)

Phase transitions in random field models
We investigate the emergence of criticality and possible violations of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem in a Ginzburg-Landau model with additive quenched noise

Key papers

Jamming transition
We investigate the emergence of a jamming phase transition in an air transportation model, where the overall delay predictability is minimal close to the critical point that underpins the jamming transition.

Key papers

  • Jamming transition in air transportation networks
    Lucas Lacasa, Miguel Cea, Massimiliano Zanin
    Physica A 388 (2009) 3948-3954