Non-Equilibrium Pattern Formation and Complex Fluids

At present, the people at the Instituut-Lorentz working in the field of nonequibrium pattern formation and complex fluids are Zorana Žeravčić (PhD student), Jan Willem van de Meent (PhD student jointly with Ray Goldstein, Cambridge), Erik Woldhuis (PhD student), Brian Tighe (postdoc), Silke Henkes (postdoc), and Wim van Saarloos (staff). Our group has strong links with the granular media group of Martin van Hecke at the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory.

Although we do not restrict the work in our group purposely to a particular topic, up to a few years ago work was centered around the topics of interfacial dynamics and pattern formation, and amplitude type descriptions of pattern formation near threshold. More recently our attention shifted more toward granular media and other complex fluids.

Highlights

Sources and sinks in traveling wave systems Dendritic melting of spin polarized Helium three Streamer dynamics as an interfacial pattern formation problem The Complex Ginzburg Landau equation: coherent structures and spatiotemporal chaos Spatiotemporal chaos near threshold in rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection Faraday melting-freezing waves at a Helium surface Universal algebraic velocity relaxation of uniformly as well as pattern forming pulled fronts Fluctuating pulled fronts have anomalous diffusive properties and non-standard KPZ scaling Some fronts are more equal than others The atomic slide puzzle Fractal(?) Lasers "Melt fracture" in polymer extrusion: a visco-elastic instability Soft Glassy Rheology of Molecular Glassforming Liquids (in Dutch)

Some introductory articles

Amplitude equations for pattern forming systems The complex Ginzburg Landau equation for beginners Three basic issues concerning interface dynamics in nonequilibrium pattern formation Some fronts are more equal than others: "pulled" fronts mature slowly, but all do so in the same way!

An introductory review article

Front propagation into unstable states

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[Correlated systems] [Wim van Saarloos] [Instituut-Lorentz]

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