Condensed Matter Theory
Professor Bulbul Chakraborty is interested in systems far from equilibrium. Her recent research has been focussed on a) analyzing the origin of glassy dynamics in supercooled liquids with a specific focus on the question of an underlying critical point, (b) exploring the origin of force chains in granular media and their effect on the jamming of granular flows, (c) the nature of the jamming transition and (d) modelling the dynamical instability in microtubules. A sampling of recent publications and short descriptions of her research topics can be found on the group's web site.
Professor Jané Kondev is interested in problems where fluctuations play a prominent role, such as the statistical physics of polymers and structural glasses. The goal is to develop coarse-grained theories that lead to experimentally falsifiable predictions. Our main focus is on systems of fluctuating lines and surfaces which due to their extended nature are strongly affected by confinement and similar constraints. For example in the context of compact polymers, which are toy models of proteins, we have developed a simple field-theoretical model which leads to exact results for the polymer scaling exponents. More details, as well as links to published papers, can be found on the group's web site.
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| Flows of grains down a hopper get jammed if the opening at the bottom is too small. The mechanism of jamming is not well understood. These snapshots of simulations of dense granular flow show that the jamming transition is preceded by the appearance of chains of frequently colliding particles (left panel) which form long-lived stress chains (right panel). | ||||