Hyperuniformity across scales

Prof. Dr. Yanina Fasano

1.  Instituto Balseiro & Low Temperatures Lab, Univ. Nac. Cuyo & CNEA,
    Bariloche, Argentina

2.  Instituto de Nanociencia y Nanotecnología, CONICET-CNEA,
    Bariloche, Argentina

Disordered patterns are ubiquitous in material and biological systems composed of interacting objects and come in two flavours with distinctive physical properties, each of them having a different behaviour of density fluctuations with distance. Some disordered systems are entailed with a hidden order named hyperuniformity [1] or superhomogeneity [2] characterized by vanishing density fluctuations at large length-scales. Disordered hyperuniform structures are incompressible at thermal equilibrium and entailed with very interesting physical properties such as being transparent in a wide range of wavelengths. [3] In contrast,  non-hyperuniform disordered systems do not present this hidden order since their large-wavelength density fluctuations do not vanish. Non-hyperuniform structures are typically opaque to light and are compressible systems. [3] Interestingly, some systems can pass from hyperuniform to non-hyperuniform and thus switch on or off interesting physical properties just by changing the type of quenched disorder of the host media where the interacting objects are nucleated. [4-5] Thus, unveiling which interactions induced by the host media can switch off the hidden hyperuniform order of a system is very important for both, practical and basic reasons. In order to answer this very relevant question, we use vortex matter in superconducting samples with different types of disorder and directly image vortices in extended fields-of-view. In this Colloquium I will discuss how the hyperuniform vortex matter nucleated in media with point-like disorder can turn into anti-hyperuniform if nucleated in samples with short-ranged correlated disorder. In addition, based on our realistic numerical simulation results, I will discuss the switching-off of the hyperuniform order induced by finite size and out-of equilibrium effects that are unavoidable in experimental conditions. [6]

[1] S. Torquato and F. H. Stillinger, Phys. Rev. E 68, 041113 (2003).

[2]   A. Gabrielli, M. Joyce, and F. Sylos Labini, Phys. Rev. D 65, 083523 (2002).

[3] S. Torquato, Phys. Rep. 745, 1 (2018).

[4] G. Rumi, J. Aragón Sánchez, F. Elías, R. Cortés Maldonado, J. Puig, N. R. Cejas Bolecek, G. Nieva, M. Konczykowski, Y. Fasano, and A. B. Kolton, Phys. Rev. Res.1, 033057 (2019).

[5] J. Puig, F. Elías, J. Aragón Sánchez, R. Cortés Maldonado, G. Rumi, G. Nieva, P. Pedrazzini, A. B. Kolton, and Y. Fasano, Comm. Mat. Nature 3, 32 (2022).

[6] R. M. Besana, F. Elías, J. Puig, J. Aragón Sánchez, G. Nieva, A.B. Kolton and Y. Fasano, invited article on Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 36, 285102 (2024).