[JC] Minimal Models of Entropic Order

by Dongwook Ghim

Thursday 10 Sept 2026, 15:00 → 16:00 Asia/Seoul

CTPU seminar room (IBS)

In this talk, I will review a recent paper by Huang, Komargodski, Lucas, Popov, and Sulejmanpasic, on the concept of entropic order. 

We typically expect simple thermodynamic systems, like the Ising model, to exhibit an ordered phase at low temperatures and a disordered phase at high temperatures. This familiar pattern is governed by the free energy F = E - TS, which is minimized at high-T by maximizing the entropic contribution with disorder. However, entropic order presents an interesting loophole behind this argument. In certain physical systems, a high-T ordered phase emerges through a trade-off: freezing one local degree of freedom facilitates another to fluctuate more wildly. As a consequence, the system maximizes its overall entropy by showing a "checkerboard" or solid-like ordered structure, where translational symmetry is spontaneously broken. As the simplest example, I will review the arithmetic Ising model (AIM) in this talk. If time permits, I will also discuss the historic & potential phenomenological applications of the concept. 

The main reference is: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07980.