Seminar “Order in disordered systems”
Date
Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Time
3:00 pm
Place
University of Barcelona
Faculty of Physics Building
Room 3.20, 3rd floor
Speaker
Dr Sándalo Roldán-Vargas, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (Germany)
Abstract
The most distinctive feature of a disordered system is the absence of a periodic long-range order. This feature can manifest in a large variety of systems such as molecular liquids, colloidal suspensions, granular materials, spin glasses, or biological entities immersed in their physiological medium. In this talk I will discuss, in a rather general and eclectic way, some of the thermodynamic and dynamic aspects of disordered systems.
First, I will introduce one of the archetypal problems in disordered systems: the nature of the Glass Transition. In particular, I will address its fundamental conundrum, that is, does the Glass Transition have a thermodynamic origin? In the second part of my talk I will consider an example of a practical application of disordered systems in material science: the design of an Inverse Gel, that is, a system which was conceived for reversibly passing from a gel to a liquid by both cooling or heating.
Finally, I will advance two future perspectives involving protein systems: the study of the phase diagram of a protein solution and the computational realization of a protein stretching experiment.
