Subsections
[Cr:4, Lc:3, Tt:0, Lb:0]
- Forces, energies and timescales in condensed matter . What is soft matter ? Basic
phenomenology of soft condensed matter systems: Colloids, polymers, membranes, liquid crystals.
Viscous, elastic and viscoelastic behaviour.
- Order Parameter, Phases and Phase transitions. Symmetry, order parameter and models.
Mean-field theory and phase diagrams. Landau theory. Liquid-gas transition, solid-liquid transition,
Ramakrishnan and Yussouff density functional theory.
- Colloidal Systems. Single colloidal particle in a liquid – Stokes’ law and Brownian motion,
Forces between colloidal particles. Depletion interactions. Stability and phase behavior of colloids.
- Polymers. Model systems, chain statistics, polymers in solutions and in melts, flexibility and
semi-flexibility, distribution functions, self-avoidance, rubber elasticity, viscoelasticity, reptation.
- Surfaces, Interfaces and Membranes. Interfacial tension. Fluctuation of Interfaces. Wetting.
Fluid vs. solid membranes, energy and elasticity, surface tension.
- Liquid Crystals. Liquid crystal phases. Nematic-Isotropic transition. Distortions and topological
defects. Frederiks transition. Polymer liquid crystals.
- Soft Biological Materials. Composition of cell. Cellular cytoskeleton. Statistical view of
dynamics inside a cell : Active vs. Passive transport. Introduction to soft active matter.
- R. A. L. Jones, Soft condensed matter, Oxford University Press 2002.
- I. W. Hamley, Introduction to soft matter, Wiley, New York 2007.
- M. Doi, Soft matter physics, Oxford University Press 2013.
- P. M. Chaikin & T. C. Lubensky, Principles of condensed matter physics, Cambridge University
Press 1995.
- T. A. Witten, Structured fluids – polymers, colloids, surfactants, Oxford University Press 2004.
- P. Nelson, Biological physics, Freeman, New York 2004.
- L. S. Hirst, Fundamentals of soft matter science, CRC Press, London 2013.
- J. V. Selinger, Introduction to the theory of soft matter, Springer, New York 2016.
- M. Kleman & O. D. Lavrentovich,Soft matter physics, Springer, New York 2003.
- S. Safran, Statistical Thermodynamics Of Surfaces, Interfaces, And Membranes, (Frontiers in
Physics), Westview Press, 2003.
- S. Ramaswamy, Active Matter, J. Stat. Mech. Theory and Experiment, Spl. Issue on statphys 26,
2017.
- M. C. Marchetti, J. F. Joanny, S. Ramaswamy, T. B. Liverpool, J. Prost, Madan Rao, and R. Aditi
Simha, Hydrodynamics of soft active matter, Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 1143 (2013).
