Seminar by Dr. Hugues Chaté [Physics of active matter: A personal overview]
crc people 2019/11/27
TITLE: Physics of active matter: A personal overview
SPEAKER: Hugues Chaté (CEA-Saclay & Beijing CSRC, PRL Editoral Board)
DATE: December 3, 2019 at 12.00h
PLACE: Sala Eduard Fontserè
ABSTRACT: Active matter consists of elementary units producing mechanical work to move themselves or to displace other objects. In other words, active matter is about systems maintained out-of-equilibrium "in the bulk", burning energy to produce directed, persistent motion. This very general definition covers all kinds of situations at all scales: groups of animal or robots, collective of cells and micro-organisms, active colloids and phoretic swimmers, mixtures of biofilaments and motor proteins. Most active matter systems exhibit surprising if not spectacular emerging collective properties that we are only starting to understand. In this talk, I will strive to give a synthetic and organized overview of what is still a fast-growing field. This overview will however be rather personal, drawing mostly from my own work. A large part if the talk will be devoted to presenting experimental results obtained mostly on living active matter, which should be of interest to biologists.