graduate

Autocatalytic processes lead to the emergence of macroscopic dynamics out of microscopic interactions

TYPEColloquium
Speaker:Prof. Sorin Solomon
Affiliation:Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Date:20.01.2014
Time:14:30
Location:Lidow Rosen Auditorium (323)
Abstract:In statistical physics the emergence of large scale collective phenomena
out of local interactions between simple agents takes place in general only
for very special (zero measure) / critical values of the parameters
(temperature, pressure, etc).
Yet in nature collective objects and their large scale dynamics are
ubiquitous features dominating our daily experience.
Each of the last decades proposed a different generic mechanism for the
emergence of macroscopic complex dynamics out of local microscopic laws.

Nowadays it seems that most of the instances in which microscopic events
are promoted to macroscopic changes are related to some form of
autocatalytic process.
Identifying the relevant autocatalytic process allows one to gain
understanding and control on the seemingly messy empirical systems.

I will review some of the instances in which the resulting models were
analytically tractable and in which the theoretical predictions were
confirmed by the data.