8th Warsaw School of Statistical Physics

29 June - 5 July 2025, Chęciny, Poland

Lecture abstracts

Arezki Boudaoud

Plant growth: a journey across scales

I will summarise recent progress in understanding plant growth from cell to tissue scale, with a focus on the rheology of the cell wall, the thin polysaccharide-made layer that surround plant cells. I will illustrate how this progress was enabled by experimental and theoretical approaches from soft matter, fluid mechanics, and statistical physics. I will notably present results from our group suggesting that growth involves a coupling between chemistry and mechanics of the cell wall and showing that growth varies with the scale at which it is observed.

Julyan Cartwright

Pattern formation in nature

In these lectures I shall discuss progress towards understanding the mathematical and physical basis of patterns seen at all scales throughout the universe and in all areas of sciences, from the patterning of materials on the atomic scale to the huge spirals of galaxies, and from patterns of sea shells and on the surface of the brain in biology to those of rocks and minerals in geology. The mathematical and physical principles behind this tendency to spatial and temporal pattern formation, or self organization, in nature are being uncovered through advances in nonlinear and complex dynamical systems theory.

Fabian Essler

Non-equilibrium dynamics of many-particle quantum systems and conservation laws

I give an introduction to non-equilibrium dynamics in many-particle quantum systems. I review the general principles that underlie local relaxation at late times and then turn to the important role played by conservation laws. I discuss both spatially homogeneous and inhomogeneous settings, and show how in the latter generalised hydrodynamics emerges.

Sunny Jung

Dynamical systems' approach to understand animal behaviors

Biological organisms have presumably adapted their behaviors or features in response to surrounding mechanical forces or instabilities to achieve better performance. In this talk, I will discuss three problems in which the dynamical systems' approach elucidates the physics behind animal behaviors. First, we investigated how cats and dogs transport water into the mouth using an inertia-driven (lapping) mechanism. We found that to maximize water intake per lap, both cats and dogs close the jaw at the column break-up time governed by unsteady inertia. This break-up (or pinch-off) time can be predicted using the stability analysis of the water column in which surface tension balances with inertia. Second, we studied how animals plunge-dive and survive from impact. Physical experiments using an elastic beam as a model for the body attached to different shapes revealed limits for the stability of the injuries during plunge-dive. The body response can be simplified as the Euler beam buckling problem with unsteady impact force on the diving front. Third, I will discuss the mechanism of releasing water lodged in the ear canal. For example, people often shake their head sideways to remove water out of ear canal after swimming or showering. This removal process involves high acceleration to push water out of a canal, which is analogous to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

Randy Kamien

The Geometry and Topology of Soft Materials

A triangle’s a triangle no matter how small. Because of that we can use our macroscopic intuition and experience to understand molecular-scale matter. Dołącz do mojego cyrku!

Karol Życzkowski

Seven-dimensional oranges, measure concentration, and spectral statistics of evolution operators