THEORY OF SOFT AND ACTIVE MATTER

Course Description

Soft condensed matter is one of the fastest-growing fields in physics, hosting a wide variety of rich new phenomena for physicists to investigate. Active matter, which deals with large systems of self-driven particles, is a particularly new and exciting subfield of soft matter, exhibiting fascinating nonequilibrium dynamics. This course will introduce students to the theory behind a wide array of soft and active matter systems and phenomena, with an emphasis on geometric and topological aspects. The first portion of the course will be a brief introduction to soft matter as a field, followed by a review of the necessary physical frameworks and mathematical tools, including statistical mechanics, hydrodynamics, and generalized elasticity. The second portion of the course will explore a variety of selected soft matter systems, with each lecture dedicated to more deeply exploring one or two of the following subjects: polymers, gels, supramolecular self-assembly, membranes, and liquid crystals. The third portion of the course will discuss active matter systems, first focusing on models of active nematic, scalar, chiral, and polar fluids, and then concluding with an application of these models to biological systems, and a discussion of open questions and current research in active matter. In the final session, students will give a short presentation about a specific soft matter system or problem that they found interesting.

This is a student-led colloquium led by Luca Scharrer (lscharrer@ucsb.edu) under the supervision of Professor Mark Bowick.

Optional Text

Richard A.L. Jones, Soft Condensed Matter, Oxford University Press
Maurice Kleman, Oleg D. Lavrentovich, Soft Matter Physics, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
P.M. Chaikin, T.C. Lubensky, Principles of Condensed Matter Physics, Cambridge University Press
Len M. Pismen, Active Matter Within and Around Us, Springer International Publishing