Failure of LMC statistical complexity in identifying structural order in the XY model

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Zamora, Dario Javier
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Zamora, Dario Javier
author_facet Zamora, Dario Javier
contents Quantifying complexity in physical systems remains a fundamental challenge, and many proposed measures fail to capture the structural features that intuitive or theoretical considerations would demand. Among them, the Lopez-Ruiz-Mancini-Calbet (LMC) statistical complexity has been widely cited due to its simplicity and analytic tractability. Here, we examine the performance and limitations of the LMC measure in a controlled physical setting: a two-dimensional XY model studied through Monte Carlo simulations. By computing LMC complexity at each step of the system's relaxation dynamics, and directly comparing these values with the evolving dipole configurations, we show that LMC complexity systematically fails to identify states of high structural complexity. In particular, the measure often assigns maximal complexity to nearly equilibrated configurations while underestimating vortex-rich intermediate states. We further show that the time derivative of LMC complexity contains more meaningful dynamical information. We propose that future measures incorporate directionality and dynamical sensitivity to better reflect the emergence and decay of organization in nonequilibrium systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_18648
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Failure of LMC statistical complexity in identifying structural order in the XY model
Zamora, Dario Javier
Statistical Mechanics
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Quantifying complexity in physical systems remains a fundamental challenge, and many proposed measures fail to capture the structural features that intuitive or theoretical considerations would demand. Among them, the Lopez-Ruiz-Mancini-Calbet (LMC) statistical complexity has been widely cited due to its simplicity and analytic tractability. Here, we examine the performance and limitations of the LMC measure in a controlled physical setting: a two-dimensional XY model studied through Monte Carlo simulations. By computing LMC complexity at each step of the system's relaxation dynamics, and directly comparing these values with the evolving dipole configurations, we show that LMC complexity systematically fails to identify states of high structural complexity. In particular, the measure often assigns maximal complexity to nearly equilibrated configurations while underestimating vortex-rich intermediate states. We further show that the time derivative of LMC complexity contains more meaningful dynamical information. We propose that future measures incorporate directionality and dynamical sensitivity to better reflect the emergence and decay of organization in nonequilibrium systems.
title Failure of LMC statistical complexity in identifying structural order in the XY model
topic Statistical Mechanics
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18648