Alessandro Bravetti

The dynamics of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) is governed by the interaction between deterministic biochemical reactions and molecular noise. To understand how GRNs process information during cell state transitions, we study stochastic dynamics derived from a Boolean network model via its representation on the parameter space of Gaussian distributions, equipped with the Fisher information metric. Restricting our analysis to transitions towards a single attractor, this reformulation reveals that dynamics along the gradient flows of the Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence requires isotropic decay rates across all nodes, and that the noise intensity quantitatively determines the potential differentiation between the initial and final states. Furthermore, we show that the Fisher geodesics, previously identified with minimal biological cost, would require the suppression of noise and lead to deterministic dynamics that lacks biological relevance. This suggests that some departure from minimal cost is necessary for cell differentiation. Our approach frames noise and decay rates as fundamental control parameters, providing a geometric principle for the analysis and design of synthetic networks.

In dually flat manifolds, there is a deep connection between gradient flows and pregeodesics. This was one of the many important contributions of Amari to information geometry. In this paper, we extend the study of this relationship to general Riemannian manifolds. Our result does not impose conditions of flatness on the connection or symmetry on its non-metricity tensor, thus broadening the geometric setting beyond Hessian manifolds. Within this framework, we provide a criterion for comparing relaxation along two different gradient descent curves of a function, formulated in terms of the non-metricity tensor of a connection for which the gradient curves are pregeodesics. We use it to study Gaussian chains, whose relaxation trajectories coincide with gradient descent curves in the space of Gaussian distributions. Thus, we recover a recent result that establishes a universal asymmetry: warming up is faster than cooling down. Our work illustrates how geometric insights rooted in Amari’s legacy offer new perspectives for optimization problems and stochastic processes.

We frame Newton’s law of cooling as a gradient flow within the context of information geometry. This connects it to a thermodynamic uncertainty relation and the Horse–Carrot theorem, and reveals novel instances of asymmetric relaxations in endoreversible processes. We present a general criterion for predicting asymmetries using the Amari–Chentsov tensor, applicable to classical and quantum thermodynamics. Examples include faster cooling of quantum ideal gases and relaxations that resemble the Mpemba effect in classical ideal gases.

In this paper, we investigate various types of symmetries and their mutual relationships in Hamiltonian systems defined on manifolds with different geometric structures: symplectic, cosymplectic, contact and cocontact. In each case, we pay special attention to non-standard (non-canonical) symmetries, in particular scaling symmetries and canonoid transformations, as they provide new interesting tools for the qualitative study of these systems. Our main results are the characterizations of these non-standard symmetries and the analysis of their relation with conserved (or dissipated) quantities.

In this paper, we discuss the reduction of symplectic Hamiltonian systems by scaling and standard symmetries which commute. We prove that such a reduction process produces a so-called Kirillov Hamiltonian system. Moreover, we show that if we reduce first by the scaling symmetries and then by the standard ones or in the opposite order, we obtain equivalent Kirillov Hamiltonian systems. In the particular case when the configuration space of the symplectic Hamiltonian system is a Lie group G, which coincides with the symmetry group, the reduced structure is an interesting Kirillov version of the Lie-Poisson structure on the dual space of the Lie algebra of G. We also discuss a reconstruction process for symplectic Hamiltonian systems which admit a scaling symmetry. All the previous results are illustrated in detail with some interesting examples.

We state conditions under which a symplectic Hamiltonian system admitting a certain type of symmetry (a scaling symmetry) may be reduced to a type of contact Hamiltonian system, on a space of one less dimension. We observe that such contact reductions underly the well-known McGehee blow-up process from classical mechanics. As a consequence of this broader perspective, we associate a type of variational Herglotz principle associated to these classical blow-ups. Moreover, we consider some more flexible situations for certain Hamiltonian systems depending on parameters, to which the contact reduction may be applied to yield contact Hamiltonian systems along with their Herglotz variational counterparts as the underlying systems of the associated scale-invariant dynamics. From a philosophical perspective, one obtains an equivalent description for the same physical phenomenon, but with fewer inputs needed, thus realizing Poincaré’s dream of a scale-invariant description of the Universe.

Leveraging techniques from the literature on geometric numerical integration, we propose a new general method to compute exact expressions for the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff (BCH) formula. In its utmost generality, the method consists in embedding the Lie algebra of interest into a subalgebra of the algebra of vector fields on some manifold by means of an isomorphism, so that the BCH formula for two elements of the original algebra can be recovered from the composition of the flows of the corresponding vector fields. For this reason we call our method the flow method. Clearly, this method has great advantage in cases where the flows can be computed analytically. We illustrate its usefulness on some benchmark examples where it can be applied directly, and discuss some possible extensions for cases where an exact expression cannot be obtained.

Leveraging techniques from the literature on geometric numerical integration, we propose a new general method to compute exact expressions for the BCH formula. In its utmost generality, the method consists in embedding the Lie algebra of interest into a subalgebra of the algebra of vector fields on some manifold by means of an isomorphism, so that the BCH formula for two elements of the original algebra can be recovered from the composition of the flows of the corresponding vector fields. For this reason we call our method the flow method. Clearly, this method has great advantage in cases where the flows can be computed analytically. We illustrate its usefulness on some benchmark examples where it can be applied directly, and discuss some possible extensions for cases where an exact expression cannot be obtained.

We use a formulation of Noether’s theorem for contact Hamiltonian systems to derive a relation between the thermodynamic entropy and the Noether invariant associated with time-translational symmetry. In the particular case of thermostatted systems at equilibrium, we show that the total entropy of the system plus the reservoir are conserved as a consequence thereof. Our results contribute to understanding thermodynamic entropy from a geometric point of view.