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This work explains how viscous heat phenomena in layered materials can be induced, controlled, and amplified, opening new avenues for managing and engineering thermal signals in technologies ranging from conventional electronics to heat-based neuromorphic computing.

Using quantum-accurate simulations, we parametrize a set of mesoscopic viscous heat equations, i.e., the thermal counterpart of the Navier-Stokes equations in the laminar regime, and predict that viscous heat flow emerges and features smoking-gun signatures such as vortices in a device with circular geometry. We also show that when these…

Our Python package Smooth Disorder has been released.

Smooth Disorder quantitatively explains how atomic disorder determines the smoothness of the vibrational density of states and the heat-transport length scales of atomic vibrations.

The package and tutorials were developed by Kamil Iwanowski in our group. Michele Simoncelli presented Smooth Disorder in a talk at MRS 2026 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Package and tutorials: https://smooth-disorder.readthedocs.io 

Our group is attending the APS Global Physics Summit in Denver, here’s a list of our talks:

Kamil Iwanowski: Mon. March 16, 8:00 — 8:36 a.m., Meeting Room 603
Bond-Network Entropy Governs Heat Transport in Coordination-Disordered Solids, Authors: Kamil Iwanowski (presenter), Gabor Csanyi, Michele Simoncelli

Andrew Smith: Mon. March 16, 8:36 — 8:48 a.m., Meeting Room 603
Origins of low-temperature vibrational and thermal anomalies in glasses 
Authors: Andrew Smith (presenter), Nikita Shcheblanov, Balazs Pota, Chuck Witt, Sergei Tarashkin, Michele Simoncelli 

Enrico Di Lucente: Wed. March…

APS Physics has highlighted our research in a feature article titled "How Disorder Regulates Heat Flow".

A new framework linking atomic disorder to thermal conductivity shows how variations in atomic bond networks control heat flow in materials that are partly crystalline and partly glassy.

Michele Simoncelli is the recipient of the 2025 Charles Haenny Prize for Physics, which recognizes research of “excellent scientific quality and internationally competitive, while also respectful of humanity and its environment”. The prize was awarded to Simoncelli in Lausanne, Switzerland, with the following citation: “For the development of novel microscopic and mesoscopic theories of thermal transport that find direct application in a better understanding of heat transport and a reduction of energy consumption in various fields.”

Crystals and glasses have opposite heat-conduction properties, which play a pivotal role in a variety of technologies. These range from the miniaturization and efficiency of electronic devices to waste-heat recovery systems, as well as the lifespan of thermal shields for aerospace applications.

Our manuscript arXiv:2408.00755 presents a theoretical and computational framework to quantify the physics-awareness of machine-learning potentials (MLP), connecting interatomic forces to physical observables such as the thermal conductivity and other thermomechanical properties. This work shows that established metrics based on formation energy can be inaccurate in predicting crystal structures, interatomic forces, and thermal conductivity. Because it tests the second- and third-order derivatives of the potential energy surface (PES), and higher derivatives expose subtle discontinuities in the…