Institute of Theoretical Physics

Key Laboratory of Theoretical Physics

  Chinese Academy of Sciences

Colloquium

Title

题目

Disorder effects and “antifragility” in Coulomb fluids

Speaker

报告人

Rudolf Podgornik
Professor of physics, professor of biophysics, University of Ljubljana.
Adjunct professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Adjunct professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.

Affiliation

所在单位

University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana and J. Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, University of Massachussetts, Amherst and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.

Date

日期

2016年6月8日（周三）15：30

Venue

地点

Conference Hall 322, ITP/理论物理所322报告厅

Abstract

摘要

I will present a conceptual and formal frameworks that allows us to understand how forces between charged macromolecular surfaces are influenced by the presence of quenched disordered charges on the boundaries. I will consider examples of monopolar and/or dipolar surface charge disorder in the case of confined Coulomb fluids and argue, that the presence of disorder can give rise to anomalously long-ranged normal and lateral interaction forces as well as torques. These disorder-generated interactions persist even for overall charge-neutral surfaces and can complicate the disentanglement of other long-range interactions, e.g. the Casimir interaction, from the observed forces. Furthermore, I will argue that in the case of strongly coupled Coulomb fluids, composed of multivalent and monovalent salt mixture with quenched disordered surface charges one can observe a peculiar type of “antifragility” where more imposed disorder actually diminishes the thermal disorder in the system, allowing the system to thrive on disorder.
The work described was featured in an AIP press release entitled “Disorder + Disorder = More Disorder?” that was later quoted by many science news sources (sciencedaily, scikon, esciencenews, ...) and even by an article in the Financial Times.

Contact person

所内合作者

Zhong-Can Ou-Yang