This is an extended version of my Nobel Lecture, delivered on December 8, 2021. I will
recall the genesis of the concept of multiple equilibria in natural sciences. I will then describe …

When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase
transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its …

In these notes the main theoretical concepts and techniques in the field of mean-field spin
glasses are reviewed in a compact and pedagogical way, for the benefit of the graduate and …

Dense active systems are widespread in nature, examples range from bacterial colonies to
biological tissues. Dense clusters of active particles can be obtained by increasing the …

We study a reference model in theoretical ecology, the disordered Lotka-Volterra model for
ecological communities, in the presence of finite demographic noise. Our theoretical …

Rich out-of-equilibrium collective dynamics of strongly interacting large assemblies emerge
in many areas of science. Some intriguing and not fully understood examples are the glassy …

Mode-coupling theory is an approach to the study of complex behavior in the supercooled
liquids which developed from the idea of a nonlinear feedback mechanism. From the …

This review reports on the research done during past years on violations of the fluctuation–
dissipation theorem (FDT) in glassy systems. It is focused on the existence of a quasi …

We study rough high-dimensional landscapes in which an increasingly stronger preference
for a given configuration emerges. Such energy landscapes arise in glass physics and …

An equilibrated model glass-forming liquid is studied by map** successive configurations
produced by molecular dynamics simulation onto a time series of inherent structures (local …