The toplogical glass
Higgs Centre colloquium
The toplogical glass
- Event time: 1:00pm
- Event date: 9th October 2015
- Speaker: Matthew Turner (Warwick University)
- Location: Higgs Centre Seminar Room, Room 4305, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Ring polymers represent one of the last major theoretical challenges facing polymer physics. The essential difficulty lies in the non-local nature of the topological constraint associated with polymers of fixed topology, such as rings (unknots), that cannot cross one-another. We perform molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations of ring polymers and propose methods to identify inter-ring threadings. We find evidence of the emergence of a percolating cluster of inter-ring penetrations which we interpret a the onset of a jammed state that we call a topological glass.
About Higgs Centre colloquia
The Higgs Centre Colloquia are a fortnightly series of talks aimed at a wide-range of topical Theoretical Physics issues..