You are here: Home / Archives for statistical mechanics

Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting on Oct 24

August 31, 2015 By

Brandeis will host the 17th annual Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting (GBASM) on Saturday, October 24, 2015, from 9:30-3:00. GBASM brings together researchers interested in statistical mechanics, nonlinear dynamics, condensed matter physics, biophysics, and related topics for a day-long workshop.  The meeting consists of four invited talks (30 min.), and a larger number of contributed “table talks”. The invited speakers for 2015 are:

Contributed talks will follow the format adopted the last two years. Contributors will give a brief announcement of their work in the lecture hall. We will then move to the adjacent room where each contributor will sit at a table with their laptop or tablet and discuss their research with interested participants. This format eliminates the expense associated with posters and provides greater feedback to contributors. The time preparing for a “table talk” should be similar to preparing for a short talk.

GBASM Sponsors for 2015 include the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Brandeis University; the Department of Physics, Boston University; the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University; the Department of Physics, UMASS Amherst; and the Department of Chemistry, MIT. Thanks to these subsidies, bagels, coffee, tea, and lunch will be provided at no cost if you register for GBASM by the deadline of Saturday, Oct 17.

Filed Under: Physics, seminars Tagged With: , , , ,

Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting, Nov 8

September 16, 2014 By

Brandeis will host the 16th annual Greater Boston Area Statistical Mechanics Meeting (GBASM) on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2014, from 9:30-3:00. GBASM is a workshop that brings together researchers interested in statistical mechanics, nonlinear dynamics, condensed matter physics, biophysics, and related topics for a day of presentations and discussions.  The meeting consists of four invited talks (30 min.), and a larger number of contributed “table talks”.

The four invited speakers for this year are:

The contributed talks will follow the format we adopted last year. Instead of three minute talks with a limited time for questions, contributors will give a brief announcement of their work in the lecture hall. We will then move to the adjacent room where each contributor will sit at a table with their laptop or tablet and discuss their research with interested participants. This format will eliminate the expense associated with posters and provide greater feedback to contributors. The time preparing for a “table talk” should be similar to preparing for a short talk.

The cost of the meeting is subsidized by the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Brandeis University; the Department of Physics, Boston University; the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University. Thanks to these subsidies, bagels, coffee, tea, and lunch will be provided at no cost if you register by the deadline of Saturday, Nov. 1.

More information   |  Registration

 

Filed Under: Physics, seminars Tagged With: , , , ,

Why nanorods assemble

December 19, 2011 By

In a recent paper in Phys. Rev. E, Brandeis postdoc Yasheng Yang and Assistant Professor of Physics Michael Hagan developed a theory to describe the assembly behavior of colloidal rods (i.e. nanorods) in the presence of inert polymer (which induces attractions between the nanorods). The nanorods assemble into several kinds of structures, including colloidal membranes, which  are two dimensional membrane-like structures composed of a one rod-length thick monolayer of aligned rods.  The theory shows that colloidal membranes are stabilized against stacking on top of each other by an entropic force arising from protrusions of rods from the membranes and that there is a critical aspect ratio (rod length/rod diameter) below which membranes are never stable. Understanding the forces that stabilize colloidal membranes is of practical importance since these structures could enable the manufacture of inexpensive and easily scalable optoelectronic devices. This work was part of a collaboration with the experimental lab of Zvonimir Dogic at Brandeis, where colloidal membranes are developed and studied.

Yang YS, Hagan MF. Theoretical calculation of the phase behavior of colloidal membranes. Phys Rev E. 2011;84(5).

Filed Under: labs, Physics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Collective behaviors in active matter

June 13, 2011 By

Active matter is describes systems whose constituent elements consume energy and are thus out-of-equilibrium. Examples include flocks or herds of animals, collections of cells, and components of the cellular cytoskeleton. When these objects interact with each other, collective behavior can emerge that is unlike anything possible with an equilibrium system. The types of behaviors and the factors that control them however, remain incompletely understood. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, “Excitable patterns in active nematics“, Giomi and coworkers develop a continuum theoretical description motivated by recent experiments from the Dogic group at Brandeis in which microtubules (filamentous cytoskeletal molecules) and clusters of kinesin (a molecular motor) exhibit dramatic spatiotemporal fluctuations in density and alignment. Specifically, they consider a hydrodynamic description for density, flow, and nematic alignment. In contrast to previous theories of this type, the degree of nematic alignment is allowed to vary in space and time.  Remarkably, the theory predicts that the interplay between non-uniform nematic order, activity and flow results in spatially modulated relaxation oscillations, similar to those seen in excitable media and biological examples such as the cardiac cycle. At even higher activity the dynamics is chaotic and leads to large-scale swirling patterns which resemble those seen in recent experiments. An example of the flow pattern is shown below left, and the nematic order parameter, which describes the degree of alignment of the filaments, as shown for the same configuration below right. These predictions can be tested in future experiments on systems of microtubules and motor proteins.

The system behavior for an active nematic at high activity. (left) The velocity field (arrows) is superimposed on a plot of the concentration of active nematogens (green=large concentration, red=small concentration). (right) A plot of the nematic order parameter, S,  (blue=large S, brown=small S) is superimposed on a plot of the nematic director (arrows). The flow under high activity is characterized by large vortices that span lengths of the order of the system size and the director field is organized in grains.

 

Filed Under: labs, Physics, postdocs Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Prolonging assembly through dissociation

June 10, 2011 By

Microtubules are semiflexible polymers that serve as structural components inside the eukaryotic cell and are involved in many cellular processes such as mitosis, cytokinesis, and vesicular transport. In order to perform these functions, microtubules continually rearrange through a process known as dynamic instability, in which they switch from a phase of slow elongation to rapid shortening (catastrophe), and from rapid shortening to growth (rescue). The basic self-assembly mechanism underlying this process, assembly mediated by nucleotide phosphate activity, is omnipresent in biological systems.  A recent paper, Prolonging assembly through dissociation: A self-assembly paradigm in microtubules ,  published in the May 3 issue of Physical Review E,  presents a new paradigm for such self-assembly in which increasing depolymerization rate can enhance assembly.  Such a scenario can occur only out of equilibrium. Brandeis Physics postdoc Sumedha, working with Chakraborty and Hagan, carried out theoretical analysis of a stochastic hydrolysis model to demonstrate the effect and predict features of growth fluctuations, which should be measurable in experiments that probe microtubule dynamics at the nanoscale.

Model for microtuble dynamics. All activity is assumed to occur at the right end of the microtubule (denoted as ">")

The essential features of the model that leads to the counterintuitive result of depolymerization helping assembly are (a) stochastic hydrolysis that allows GTP to transform into GDP  in any part of the microtubule, and (b) a much higher rate of GTP attachment if the end of the microtubule has a GTP-bound tubulin dimer, compared to a GDP-bound tubulin dimer.    Process (a) leads to islands of GTP-bound tubulins to be buried deep in the microtubule.   Depolymerization from the end reveals these islands and enhances assembly because of the biased attachment rate (b).  The simplicity of the model lent itself to analytical results for various aspects of the growth statistics in particular parameter regimes.   Simulations of the model supported these analytical results, and extended them to regimes where it was not possible to solve the model analytically.  The statistics of the growth fluctuations in this stochastic hydrolysis model are very different from “cap models” which do not have GTP remnants buried inside a growing microtubule.   Testing the predictions in experiments could, therefore, lead to a better understanding of the processes underlying dynamical instability in-vivo and in-vitro.   An interesting question to explore is whether the bias in the attachment rates is different under different conditions of microtubule growth.

Filed Under: labs, Physics, postdocs Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

A lattice of interacting chemical oscillators

May 24, 2011 By

At Brandeis, there is a long tradition of interesting experiments on the Belousov-Zhabostinsky reaction system, with the legendary Zhabotinsky himself having been a part of the fraternity. This reaction system shows interesting oscillatory and stable patterns (see videos on Youtube). In the Fraden lab, an oil emulsion of micron-sized water droplets containing the BZ reactions, was shown to show interesting synchronization properties and complex spatial patterns [Toiya et al, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 1, 1241 (2010)]. A coupling between the droplets due to preferential diffusion of an inhibitory reactant (bromine) in the oil medium was seen to be responsible for these collective phenomena.

In a new paper titled “Phase and frequency entrainment in locally coupled phase oscillators with repulsive interactions” in Phys. Rev. E, Physics Ph. D student Michael Giver, postdoc Zahera Jabeen and Prof. Bulbul Chakraborty show that neighboring oscillators can be modeled as Kuramoto phase oscillators, coupled nonlinearly to its nearest neighbors. The form of the coupling chosen is repulsive, which favors out of phase synchronization. They show using linear stability analysis as well as numerical study that the stable phase patterns depend on the geometry of the lattice. A linear chain of these repulsively coupled oscillators shows anti-phase synchronization, in which neighboring oscillators show a phase difference of π The phase difference between the neighboring oscillators when placed on a ring however depends on the number of oscillators. In such a case, the locally preferred phase difference of π is ruled out for an odd number of oscillators, as this may lead to frustration. When these oscillators are placed on a triangular lattice in two dimensions, the geometry of the lattice constrains the phase difference between two neighboring oscillators to 2 π /3. Interestingly, domains with different helicities form in the lattice. In each domain, the phases of any three neighboring oscillators can vary continuously in either clockwise or an anti-clockwise direction. Hence, phase difference between the nearest neighbors are seen to be ±2π /3 in the two domains (See figure). A phase difference of π is seen at the interfaces of these domains. These domains can grow in time, resembling domain coarsening in other statistical studies. At large coupling strengths, the domains freeze in size due to frequency synchronization of all the oscillators. Hence, an interplay between frequency synchronization and phase synchronization was seen in this system. Ongoing studies in the BZ experimental setup at the Fraden Lab, find correlations with the above results. Hence, insights into a complex system like the BZ oscillators could be gained using the phase oscillator formalism.

The research was supported by the ACS Petroleum Research Fund and the Brandeis MRSEC. Michael Giver is a trainee in the Brandeis NSF-sponsored IGERT program Time, Space & Structure: Physics and Chemistry of BIological Systems

Filed Under: labs, Physics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Protected by Akismet
Blog with WordPress

Welcome Guest | Login (Brandeis Members Only)