Spatial self-organization driven by temporal noise

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Anand, Satyam, Zhang, Guanming, Martiniani, Stefano
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911411433635840
author Anand, Satyam
Zhang, Guanming
Martiniani, Stefano
author_facet Anand, Satyam
Zhang, Guanming
Martiniani, Stefano
contents The counterintuitive emergence of order from noise is a central phenomenon in science, ranging from pattern formation and synchronization to order-by-disorder in frustrated systems. While large-scale spatial self-organization induced by local spatial noise is well studied, whether temporal noise can also drive such organization remains an open question. Here, by studying interacting particle systems, we show that temporally correlated noise can lead to a self-organized state with suppressed long-range density fluctuations, or hyperuniformity. Further, we develop a fluctuating hydrodynamic theory that quantitatively explains the origin of this phenomenon. Finally, by casting the dynamics as a stochastic optimization problem, we show that temporal correlations lead to better solutions, akin to perturbed gradient descent in neural networks -- where noise is injected during training to escape poor minima. This reveals a striking correspondence between perturbed gradient descent dynamics on the energy landscapes of particle systems and the loss landscapes of neural networks. Our study establishes temporal correlations as a novel mechanism for noise-driven self-organization, with broad implications for self-assembling materials, biological systems, and optimization algorithms that leverage temporal noise for applications like differentially private learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_23098
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spatial self-organization driven by temporal noise
Anand, Satyam
Zhang, Guanming
Martiniani, Stefano
Soft Condensed Matter
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
The counterintuitive emergence of order from noise is a central phenomenon in science, ranging from pattern formation and synchronization to order-by-disorder in frustrated systems. While large-scale spatial self-organization induced by local spatial noise is well studied, whether temporal noise can also drive such organization remains an open question. Here, by studying interacting particle systems, we show that temporally correlated noise can lead to a self-organized state with suppressed long-range density fluctuations, or hyperuniformity. Further, we develop a fluctuating hydrodynamic theory that quantitatively explains the origin of this phenomenon. Finally, by casting the dynamics as a stochastic optimization problem, we show that temporal correlations lead to better solutions, akin to perturbed gradient descent in neural networks -- where noise is injected during training to escape poor minima. This reveals a striking correspondence between perturbed gradient descent dynamics on the energy landscapes of particle systems and the loss landscapes of neural networks. Our study establishes temporal correlations as a novel mechanism for noise-driven self-organization, with broad implications for self-assembling materials, biological systems, and optimization algorithms that leverage temporal noise for applications like differentially private learning.
title Spatial self-organization driven by temporal noise
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23098