Physics of active systems

Fabrice Thalmann, Antonio Stocco (ICS)

Starting from the classical Brownian random walkers case (Wiener process), we will investigate a number of phenomena relevant to soft matter science, physical chemistry and biochemistry, disordered and complex systems.

We will start by introducing first passage times and capture problems, reaction diffusion kinetics (smoluchovski binding rates, dynamic quenching of fluorescence,etc), persistence in stochastic processes, space-time correlations in reactive systems, random aggregation or surface growth.

Then, we will turn to situations displaying anomalous diffusion (Levy flights, trap dynamics, phenomenology of aging, turbulent advection…)

Finally, we will address the case of active dissipative systems: particles, swimmers and various emerging collective phenomena

Whenever possible, theoretical arguments will be presented and confronted to experimental results.