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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
This talk will be concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It will attempt to indicate and illustrate the richness that has arisen, in conceptual understanding, in methodology and in application, across a large range of scientific disciplines, together with a hint of some of the further opportunities that remain to be tapped. In doing so it will take the perspective of physics and try to show, albeit rather briefly and in "broad-brush", how physics has contributed to such study and also how statistical physicists have been stimulated by issues arising in non-conventionally physics contexts. The approach will be semi-pictorial and proceed via analogies and concepts, giving flavours rather than detailed mathematical analysis.
Host: Peter Loxley, loxley@lanl.gov