The Physics of Complex Systems

Scalar vs. vector models

Macroscopic elasticity of compressed powders

Hertzian contacts

Other models

Rough grain surfaces and plastic deformations

Mirage effects

Surface flows

Relevant variables

Coupled equations

Examples of steady flows

Filling a silo

An (idealized) rotating drum

Transients

Uphill waves

Triangular profiles

Onset of avalanches

Spinodal growth "in situ"

Nucleation models

Two types of dynamical scenarios

Slowly rotating drums

Another scenario

Choosing the scenario

Concluding remarks

Patterns generation and competition in nonequilibrium optical media: a case study for complexity

Introduction

PART I. Complexity and model building

Complexity vs. complex systems

Complexity of symbolic sequences

A dynamical approach to complexity

An adaptive measurement procedure

PART II. Pattern formation and competition in nonlinear optics

Complexity and patterns

A pedagogical approach to patterns

Experimental results

Optical crystals and quasi-crystals

Competition and coexistence of optical patterns

The theoretical model

Summary and outlook

Long-tailed distributions and non-Brownian transport in complex systems

Introduction

Fractal time

Slow relaxations

Fractal space processes

Non-linear dynamics

Brownian motion in confined media: spatial and hydrodynamic constraints

Introduction

Potential wells-spatial constraints

Potential wells created by external fields

Potential wells imposed by mechanical obstacle

Hydrodynamic constraints near solid obstacles

Brownian diffusion parallel to the walls

Brownian diffusion perpendicular to the walls

Modeling a Brownian walker with a space-dependent diffusion constant

Dewetting

General aims

The air/solid interface

The hydrodynamic model

Coating processes

Dewetting by dry patches

Rubber/solid interfaces

Aquaplaning of motor cars

Offset 4-color printing [12]

Thin films

Future research

DNA-based molecular computing

Introduction

DNA

DNA implementation of the Hamiltonian path problem

In-vitro evolution solves the problem of specific chemical binding

What is a computer

Recognition

String matching

DNA melting

Kinetics of DNA hybridization

Thermodynamics of molecular computation

DNA replication

Ligation

Polymerase and error correction

The polymerase chain reaction

Hybridization errors in PCR

Parallel overlap assembly

Conclusion

Scaling behavior in economics: empirical results and modeling of company growth

Introduction

Background

Empirical results

Size distribution of publicly-traded companies

The distribution of annual growth rates

Mean growth rate

Standard deviation of the growth rate

Other measures of size

The T-year growth rates

Discussion

Stochastic modeling

The exponential distribution of growth rates

Time dependence of the growth-rate distribution

The scaling exponent beta

Combining the two models

Conclusions

Hydrophobic free energy eigenfunctions help define continuous wavelet transformations of amino acid sequences of protein families

Introduction

Hydrophobic free energy transformations of amino acid sequences

Construction of hydrophobic free energy eigenfunctions

Morlet wavelet transformation of protein hydrophobicity sequences and their leading eigenfunctions

Wavelet analyses of amino acid sequences from four structural protein families

Dynamics of fluctuating surfaces and interfaces

Introduction

Early stages of the growth: dynamic scaling of the size distribution

Nucleation and growth of droplets

Island distribution and morphology in epitaxial growth

Long-time behavior

Dynamic scaling of growing surfaces

Examples of surface growth phenomena

Surface tension dominated growth: models and experiments

Models

Two-fluid displacement in porous media

Surface growth with quenched noise

Surface diffusion dominated growth

Surface evolution and morphology in epitaxial growth

Conclusions

Measurements of curvatures of the oil-water interface in isometric bicontinuous microemulsions by scattering experiments

Introduction

Experiments

Scattering intensities from a bicontinuous microemulsion in bulk and film contrasts

Data analysis

Discussion and summary

Appendix

Effects of surface adhesion on the phase behavior of water-in-oil microemulsions and viscosity of co-polymer micelles

PART I. Phase separation and percolation behavior of AOT/water/decane microemulsions

Introduction

Baxter's sticky sphere model and the associated phase diagram

Analysis of SANS data below T_c

Analysis of the phase diagram

Summary

PART II. Effects of surface adhesion on viscosity of co-polymer micellar solutions

Introduction

Microstructure of polymeric micelles

Model for the inter-micellar structure factor

Viscosity of suspension of hard spheres with an adhesive surface

Viscosity of tri-block co-polymer micelles

Summary

Structure and dynamics of suspensions from first principles?

Introduction

Interacting electric double layers

Brownian motion and multiple time-scale analysis

Traditional description of Brownian motion

Multiple time-scale analysis

Forces on Brownian particles from first principles

Multiple time-scale derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation

Interacting Brownian particles

Numerical evaluation of friction

Perspectives

Interacting Brownian particles: the dynamics of colloidal suspensions

Introduction

Structural properties of colloidal suspensions

Typical systems

Structural properties and scattering

Determination of the pair distribution function

Polydisperse systems and mixtures

Dynamics of colloidal suspensions

Time scales and transport equations

Short-time dynamics

Long-time dynamics

Memory equations

Mode-coupling approximation

Conclusions

Phase transitions in colloidal suspensions

Introduction

Interaction potentials in atomic and colloidal systems

Phase diagrams

Fluid-crystal phase transition for particles interacting through a repulsive potential

Phase transitions for colloidal particles with polymer-induced depletion attractions

Phase separation processes

Nucleation and growth

Nucleation

Growth

Spinodal decomposition

Early stage

Late stage

Transient gelation

Kinetics of spinodal decomposition in gels

Introduction

Background

Theory of spinodal decomposition kinetics

Experimental results

Conclusion

Vesicle phases from perfluorosurfactants with cosurfactants and their properties

Introduction

Results

The system C8F17SO3H/N(C2H5)4OH/C7F15CH2OH

The system C8F17CO2NH4/C8F17CO2H

The systems C8F17SO3H and C8F17SO3N(C2H5)4 with C8F17CO2H

The systems prepared from 200 mM C8F17SO3N(C2H5)4 with C3F7O[(CF3)CF2O]n CF(CF3)CO2H with n=0,1,2,3

The system C8F17SO3N(C2N5)4/n-hexanol

The system C8F17S03H/n-decanol

Conclusions

Scaling of interfacial tension and identity of bending moduli of microemulsions

Introduction

Microemulsion structure and interfacial curvature

Interfacial film free energy

Statistical-mechanical expressions for the amphiphilic film coefficients

Scaling of the interfacial tension of microemulsions

Arrested phase separation and microemulsion phase diagram

Relaxation phenomena in disordered systems

Introduction

Time correlation function

Applications to disordered systems

Critical phenomena in supramolecular liquid mixtures

Dielectric relaxation at percolation

Glassy relaxation of density correlations in the mode-coupling theory

Slow dynamics in water

Conclusions

Scaling properties of DNA sequences and heartbeat rate

Long-range power law correlations

DNA

The "DNA walk"

Correlations and fluctuations

Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA)

Systematic analysis of GenBank database

Generalized Levy walk model

Mosaic nature of DNA structure

Detecting characteristic patch sizes

Fractal analysis of interbeat intervals

Scaling behavior of heartbeat intervals

Physics investigation of financial markets

Introduction

Scaling and its breakdown in the Standard & Poor's 500 index

The truncated Levy flight

Failures of the description of some aspects of the S&P 500 dynamics in terms of the TLF model

Analogies and differences with turbulence

Discussion

Frustration and connectivity in spin glasses, glasses and granular materials

Introduction

Clusters in the Ising model

Clusters in the Ising spin glass model

Bond frustrated percolation

Frustration in glass-forming liquids

Spin frustrated lattice gas

Site frustrated percolation

Hamiltonian formalism for FP

Frustrated percolation and glass forming liquids

Granular materials

Slow dynamics of glassy systems

Introduction

The Random Energy Model

The definition of the model

Equilibrium properties of the model

Properties of the low-temperature phase

Dynamical properties of the model

Models with partially correlated energy

The definition of the models

Equilibrium properties of the models

The free-energy landscape

Mode coupling theory at short times

Dynamical properties of the models from a landscape analysis

More realistic models

General consideration on long-range Hamiltonians with and without quenched disorder

Short-range models

Pressure-driven elastic instabilities and solid-state amorphization

Introduction

Generalized stability criteria

Simulation of solid-state amorphization

Role of atomic size effects in chemical ordering

Implications and perspective

Modelling ionic transport in complex systems

Introduction

Dispersed ionic conductors

Glassy ionic conductors: experimental situation

Coulomb-lattice gas in a disordered potential

The dynamic structure model (DSM)

Thermodynamics and dynamics of supercooled water

Introduction

Thermodynamics of supercooled water

Mode coupling theory

Dynamics in supercooled water

The glassy state problem: failure to crystallize, and vitrification

Introduction: questions, concepts, and terminology

What is a glass?

Ergodicity breaking and the glass transition

Origin of glass-forming ability

The Kauzmann paradox and the potential energy hypersurface

Relaxation and entropy

Relaxation in the non-ergodic state

Relaxation in the ergodic domain

Relaxation in the non-ergodic state near T_g

Entropy at the glass transition and the validity of Ehrenfest-like thermodynamic relaxations

Kinetic aspects of vitrification: strong and fragile liquids

The glass transition in covalent systems

View from the solid

POSTERS

The renewal of the epidermis: a topological mechanism

Introduction

Topological representation of biological tissues

Information available

Structural signature of disorder: Lewis' law and Aboav's law

Coupled rate equations. The human epidermis

Coupled rate equations for mitosis

Rate equations of the skin

Solutions for a flat tissue

Consequences

Conclusions

Scaling laws of dielectric testing particles subject to randomly distributed vortices in electro-convective turbulence

Description

Geometry of dynamics and phase transitions

Introduction

Instability of the dynamics and phase transitions

Geometric properties

Random cellular systems as dynamical maps: disorder, curvature and diffusion

Topology characterization

Applications

Space curvature and froth structure

Freedom and constraint in the construction of a disordered structure

Diffusion in disordered media

Algebraic methods for many-body systems

Introduction

The U(2) model for the anharmonic oscillator

The U(4) vibron model in molecular physics

The U(6) interacting boson model for nuclei

The U(N)xU(3) dipolar model for collective resonances

Conclusions

Intermittency and turbulence in magnetospheric dynamics

Quantitative characterization of liquid to solid phase transition in a DPPC monolayer

Introduction

Experimental setup

Results and discussion

Glassy dielectric relaxation of protons in hydrated protein powders

Universality of subleading exponents induced by one-dimensional defects: the case of self-avoiding walks

Introduction

Dimensionality of defects and correction to scaling

Models, Monte Carlo simulations and results

Approximation theories on delayed stochastic systems

Clumping of base pairs in DNA

Introduction

Ratio analysis

Method

Clumping in primate DNA

Clumping in different sources

Clumping of amino acids

Clumping measure analysis

Method

Clumping measures for trinucleotides

Clumping measures for dinucleotides

Clumping measures for amino acids

Discussion

Light scattering and UV-visible absorption studies of DLA aggregation kinetics in biological systems

Water-protein interface characterization by means of molecular dynamics simulations

Introduction

Computational methods

Results and discussion

Conclusions

Rayleigh wing spectroscopy to study confined dynamics in H-bonded systems

Introduction

Experimental procedure

Results and discussion

A thermodynamic description of the role of chain folding in the melt crystallization kinetics of nucleated polypropylene

Rheology of magnetic silica dispersions

Introduction

Synthesis

Rheology

Conclusions

Strong critical enhancement of the viscosity of a colloid polymer mixture

Weight space structure of the parity machine with binary weights: analytical and numerical results

Further numerical evidence for super-roughening in crystalline surfaces with disordered substrate

Power law distribution of dimeric tandem repeats in DNA sequences

Adsorption of a new type of triblock copolymer (PEO-PTHF-PEO) at non-polar surfaces

Spherical model on graphs

SOC dynamics for fully frustrated spin systems

Theory of extremal dynamics with quenched disorder: self-organization, avalanches dynamics and critical exponents

Hydrodlynamic interactions of particles trapped between two walls: theory and experimental studies

A model for the compaction of granular media

Identification of an intermediate-segregation regime in a symmetric diblock copolymer system

High-precision critical behaviour from cluster variation method

Monte Carlo fixed scale transformation for non-local fractal growth models

A blocking technique for emulating large polyelectrolytes

Interference of light after a random walk

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