Equilibrium States Corresponding to Targeted Hyperuniform Nonequilibrium Pair Statistics

TL;DR

This study supports the Zhang-Torquato conjecture by demonstrating that certain nonequilibrium hyperuniform systems can be accurately represented by equilibrium models with effective two-body interactions, and explores their structural properties.

Contribution

The paper provides computational evidence that nonequilibrium hyperuniform systems can be realized as equilibrium states with simple effective potentials, and analyzes their higher-order structural statistics.

Findings

Nonequilibrium hyperuniform models can be achieved by equilibrium states with effective two-body potentials.

Differences in higher-order statistics measure the degree of nonequilibrium.

Effective potentials exhibit stronger hyperuniformity after quenching.

Abstract

The Zhang-Torquato conjecture [Phys. Rev. E 101, 032124 (2020)] states that any realizable pair correlation function $g_2({\bf r})$ or structure factor $S({\bf k})$ of a translationally invariant nonequilibrium system can be attained by an equilibrium ensemble involving only (up to) effective two-body interactions. To test this conjecture, we consider two singular nonequilibrium models of recent interest that also have the exotic hyperuniformity property: a 2D "perfect glass" and a 3D critical absorbing-state model. We find that each nonequilibrium target can be achieved accurately by equilibrium states with effective one- and two-body potentials, lending further support to the conjecture. To characterize the structural degeneracy of such nonequilibrium-equilibrium correspondence, we compute higher-order statistics for both models, as well as those for a hyperuniform 3D uniformly randomized lattice (URL), whose higher-order statistics can be very precisely ascertained. Interestingly, we find that the differences in the higher-order statistics between nonequilibrium and equilibrium systems with matching pair statistics, as measured by the "hole" probability distribution, provides measures of the degree to which a system is out of equilibrium. We show that all three systems studied possess the \textit{bounded-hole} property, and that holes near the maximum hole size in the URL are much rarer than those in the underlying simple cubic lattice. Remarkably, upon quenching, the effective potentials for all three systems possess local energy minima with stronger forms of hyperuniformity compared to their target counterparts. Our work is expected to facilitate the self-assembly of tunable hyperuniform soft-matter systems.