# Emergent Bistability and Switching in a Nonequilibrium Crystal

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that global bistability in nonequilibrium systems can occur without bistable elements, through experimental and simulation evidence of switching between crystalline and gas-like states driven by conservative forces, damping, and noise.

## Contribution

It reveals that system-wide bistability can emerge without local bistable components, challenging previous assumptions about multistability origins.

## Key findings

- Experimental observation of state switching in microparticle system
- Simulations show forces, damping, and noise cause bistability
- Bistability occurs over seconds to hours

## Abstract

Multistability is an inseparable feature of many physical, chemical and biological systems which are driven far from equilibrium. In these nonequilibrium systems, stochastic dynamics often induces switching between distinct states on emergent timescales, for example, bistable switching is a natural feature of noisy, spatially-extended systems that consist of bistable elements. Nevertheless, here we present experimental evidence that bistable elements are not required for the global bistability of a system. We observe temporal switching between a crystalline, condensed state and a gas-like, excited state in a spatially-extended, quasi-two-dimensional system of charged microparticles. Accompanying numerical simulations show that conservative forces, damping, and stochastic noise are sufficient to prevent steady-state equilibrium, leading to switching between the two states over a range of time scales, from seconds to hours.