Abbréviation
M2

Alexandru Petrescu, Pierre Rouchon

Ulysse Chabaud & Francesco Arzani

Kris Van Houcke

In this course, you will learn tools and ideas developed by statistical physics to deal with "complex systems". These tools can be used in different contexts, including economics and social sciences where the modelling of collective phenomena, crises, panics, and discontinuities, is more necessary than ever.

The main goal of the course is to study the light-matter interaction at the fundamental level where one two-level system interacts with a single mode of the electromagnetic field. 

The lecture will first present the fundamental concept of cavity quantum electrodynamics (JaynesCummings model, resonant and dispersive interaction, Schrödinger cat states of light) and then moves to the more recent developments of circuit QED. 

This course deals with transfers in complex fluids, which are ubiquitous processes in everyday life and industrial applications, as well as in geological or biological systems. Different types of transfers will be examined : first, drying and dissolution and, in a second part, wetting of a solid surface. The specificities of the drying of complex fluids will be highlighted, and associated phenomena such as glass transition, Marangoni effects, etc. will be described quantitatively in the light of recent literature. The mechanisms of the reverse process of dissolution will also be detailed. Then, starting from the description of the wetting of a solid by a simple liquid, we will see how introducing complexity in this multiphase problem (viscoelasticity, surface-volume exchanges, intermediate characteristic length scale, activity…) modifies the contact between media. The related challenges posed in industrial applications will also be detailed.

 

This course is about how to describe complex systems using ideas of the renormalization group (‘coarse-graining’) and statistical field theory.