Research Topics

My research sits at the intersection of non-equilibrium statistical physics, disordered systems, and computational physics. The themes below reflect the main threads of my work — they are not isolated: the physics of disorder, collective rearrangements, and avalanches runs through all of them, from passive amorphous solids to active matter, from driven elastic interfaces to robot swarms.

Yielding and flow of amorphous solids

Amorphous materials — metallic glasses, dense suspensions, foams, emulsions — deform and flow in ways that elude classical plasticity theory. I develop and study elastoplastic models: coarse-grained descriptions where localized rearrangements (shear transformations) interact via long-range elastic fields. Key questions include the nature of the yielding transition, avalanche statistics, the role of thermal activation, memory effects induced by oscillatory driving, and fracture in disordered amorphous structures.

Selected papers

  • Nicolas, Ferrero, Martens, Barrat — Deformation and flow of amorphous solids: insights from elastoplastic models — Rev. Mod. Phys. (2018) Review
  • Ferrero, Jagla — Elastic interfaces on disordered substrates: from mean-field depinning to yielding — Phys. Rev. Lett. (2019) Letter
  • Ferrero, Jagla — Criticality in elastoplastic models with stress-dependent yielding rates — Soft Matter (2019)
  • Liu, Ferrero, Jagla, Martens, Rosso, Talon — The fate of shear-oscillated amorphous solids — J. Chem. Phys. (2022)
  • Ferrero, Kolton, Jagla — The yielding of amorphous solids at finite temperatures — Phys. Rev. Materials (2021)
  • Rodriguez-Lopez, Martens, Ferrero — Temperature dependence of fast relaxation processes in amorphous materials — Phys. Rev. Materials (2023)
  • Rodriguez-Lopez, Ferrero — Thermal activation drives a finite-size crossover from scale-free to runaway avalanches — Phys. Rev. E (2026)
  • Ferrero, Jagla — Cyclic perturbations facilitate athermal creep in yield-stress materials — Soft Matter (2025)
  • Bonfanti, Ferrero, Sellerio, Guerra, Zapperi — Damage accumulation in silica glass nanofibers — Nano Letters (2018)

Depinning, creep and domain wall dynamics

A driven elastic line in a random medium — a magnetic domain wall, a contact line, a crack front — moves through a landscape shaped by the competition between elasticity and disorder. Below the depinning threshold it advances by thermally activated creep; at threshold it undergoes an avalanche-driven critical transition. Magnetic domain walls in ultrathin ferromagnetic films are a particularly clean experimental realization of this physics, allowing direct comparison between theory, simulation, and velocity measurements across the full creep–depinning–flow crossover. I study critical exponents, spatiotemporal patterns, and the limits of the elastic approximation, combining large-scale GPU simulations, scaling theory, and functional renormalization group ideas.

Selected papers

  • Ferrero, Foini, Giamarchi, Kolton, Rosso — Creep motion of elastic interfaces driven in a disordered landscape — Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. (2021) Review
  • Ferrero, Foini, Giamarchi, Kolton, Rosso — Spatiotemporal patterns in ultraslow domain wall creep dynamics — Phys. Rev. Lett. (2017) Letter
  • Albornoz, Ferrero, Kolton, Jeudy, Bustingorry, Curiale — Universal critical exponents of the magnetic domain wall depinning transition — Phys. Rev. B (2021) Letter
  • Caballero, Ferrero, Kolton, Curiale, Jeudy, Bustingorry — Magnetic domain wall creep and depinning: a scalar field model approach — Phys. Rev. E (2018)
  • Ferrero, Bustingorry, Kolton — Non-steady relaxation and critical exponents at the depinning transition — Phys. Rev. E (2013)
  • Kolton, Bustingorry, Ferrero, Rosso — Uniqueness of the thermodynamic limit for driven disordered elastic interfaces — JSTAT (2013)
  • Kolton, Ferrero, Rosso — Depinning free of the elastic approximation — Phys. Rev. B (2023)
  • Russo, Ferrero, Kolton, Rosso, Vandembroucq — Activation and avalanche length scales in finite temperature creep of an elastic interface — arXiv:2604.17600 Preprint, accepted PRL

Avalanches and yielding in active matter

Self-propelled particles in dense environments form active glasses — systems where activity competes with caging and jamming. I study how avalanche statistics, yielding, and mechanical responses are modified when particles have intrinsic motility or persistence, including in mixtures of active and passive components where activity can be used to spatially and temporally control avalanche nucleation and propagation. This is an emerging direction that bridges the physics of amorphous solids with active and living matter.

Selected papers

  • Wiese, Ferrero, Levis — Avalanches in active glasses with finite persistence — arXiv:2512.00523 Preprint
  • Landi, Janzen, Valeriani, Ferrero, Matoz-Fernandez — Spatial and temporal control of avalanches in dense active-passive mixtures — arXiv:2610.23696 Preprint

Collective behavior and opinion dynamics

During my time at the University of Barcelona, I explored collective decision-making in multi-agent systems — from robot swarms mimicking honeybee nest-site selection to models of interdependent agents with quality-sensitive interactions. These systems display rich non-equilibrium phase transitions, and bring statistical physics tools to bear on questions in social and biological collective behavior.

Selected papers

  • March, Múgica, Ferrero, Miguel — Honeybee-like collective decision making in a kilobot swarm — Phys. Rev. Research (2024)
  • March, Ferrero, Miguel — Consensus formation and relative stimulus perception in quality-sensitive, interdependent agent systems — Phys. Rev. Research (2024)

Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and phase transitions

My earlier work focused on the non-equilibrium dynamics of spin models — Potts models, mean-field systems — probing metastability, short-time critical dynamics, spinodal points, and dynamical heterogeneities near phase transitions. These studies established the numerical methods and physical intuitions that became central to my later work on driven disordered systems.

Selected papers

  • Ferrero, Romá, Bustingorry, Gleiser — Dynamical heterogeneities as fingerprints of a backbone structure in Potts models — Phys. Rev. E (2012)
  • Anteneodo, Ferrero, Cannas — Short-time dynamics of finite-size mean-field systems — JSTAT (2010)
  • Loscar, Ferrero, Grigera, Cannas — Non-equilibrium characterization of spinodal points using short time dynamics — J. Chem. Phys. (2009)
  • Ferrero, Cannas — Long-term ordering kinetics of the two-dimensional q-state Potts model — Phys. Rev. E (2007)

Scientific HPC approach

GPU-based parallel simulation is not a side interest — it is the methodological backbone of most of my numerical work. During my PhD at FaMAF (UNC, Córdoba), at the earliest stages of CUDA’s availability to the scientific community, I collaborated with computer scientists to develop GPU implementations of Monte Carlo algorithms for spin models. That early interdisciplinary experience — as co-founder of the GPGPU@CAB computing group at Centro Atómico Bariloche and former member of GPGPU@FaMAF — shaped how I approach large-scale simulations to this day.

I have been involved in organizing and teaching GPU computing since the First Argentinean School on GPGPU Computing for Scientific Applications (FaMAF-UNC, 2011) and the course Introduction to Numerical Calculus on Graphics Processing Units (Instituto Balseiro, 2012), and I continue teaching GPU computing at Instituto Balseiro today. In 2015 I received the Best Poster Award at the PUMPS summer school (Barcelona Supercomputing Center) for a display of GPU implementations across four different condensed matter problems.

Every simulation in my work since the early GPU papers uses CUDA C/C++, with libraries including Thrust, cuFFT, and hardware-optimized random number generators. The codes behind most of my published results are openly available on Bitbucket. A non-exhaustive list of published GPU codes:

Published GPU codes