Papers of the November 1988 meeting in Hakone, Japan present a cross section of the current research in self-organizing macromolecular fluids. The topics include microphase separation of block copolymers, chemical and physical gelation, polymer adsorption, and polymers in random media and in external fields. The emphasis is on theoretical aspects. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Structural organization or disorganization in macromolecular systems has been an important subject of polymer physical chemistry during the last one or two decades. This volume summarizes the main lectures presented at the Osaka University Macromolecular Symposium OUMS '98 on Molecular Interactions and Time-Space Organization in Macromolecular Systems, where the following topics were discussed:crystallization kinetics, liquid crystals, phase separation, gelation, adhesion, complex formation, and self-organization, with emphasis on molecular interactions. Both these topics are hot issues at present and frequently are taken up as a main theme at a particular symposium. The present symposium invited leading theorists and experimentalists in these fields as guest speakers and is expected to attract the interest of a significant range of readers.
This volume summarizes the papers presented at the First Osaka University Macromolecular Symposium OUMS'93 on "Ordering in Macromolecular Systems", which was held at Senri Life Science Center, Osaka, Japan, on June 3 through June 6, 1993. The symposium covered the three topics, (1) Crystallization and Phase Transitions, (2) Polymer Liquid Crystals and (3) Block Copolymers, Polymer Blends and Surfaces, and invited leading scientists in these fields. At present any of these topics is a hot issue in itself and frequently taken up separately in many occasions. It is noted however that all these topics are correlated with each other with the keyword "Ordering" and their combination provides a unique feature of the present symposium in reflecting the interactions among investigators working in these important fields with the common ground expressed by the keyword "Ordering". Nineteen invited lectures and 40 posters of both experiment and theory were presented at the symposium, and the eighteen lectures and ten poster presentations contribute to this volume. In the first topic crystal structures and their transitions were discussed from kinetic as well as static points of view; attention was paid to give a molecular-level interpretation of the structure, phase transition and physical properties, using theories and simulations. The second topic was mainly concerned with static structures and thermodynamic properties of polymer liquid crystals including phase behaviours.
Providing a comprehensive introduction with the necessary background material to make it accessible for a wide scientific audience, Kinetics of Phase Transitions discusses developments in domain-growth kinetics. This book combines pedagogical chapters from leading experts in this area and focuses on incorporating various experimentally releva
The fourth Nishinomiya-Yukawa Memorial Symposium, devoted to the topic of dynamics and patterns in complex fluids, was held on October 26 and 27, 1989, in Nishinomiya City, Japan, where ten invited speakers gave their lectures. A one-day meeting, comprising short talks and poster sessions, was then held on the same topic on October 28 at the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics, Kyoto University. The present volume contains the 10 invited papers and 38 contributed papers presented at these two meetings. The symposium was sponsored by Nishinomiya City, where Prof. Hideki Yukawa once lived and where he wrote the celebrated paper describing the work that was later honored by a Nobel prize. The topic of the fourth symposium was chosen from one of the most vigorously evolving and highly interdisciplinary fields in condensed matter physics. The field of complex fluids is very diverse and still in its infancy and, as a result, the definition of a complex fluid varies greatly from one researcher to the next. One of the objectives of the symposium was to clarify its definition by explicitly posing a number of potentially rich problems waiting to be explored. Indeed, experimentalists are disclosing a variety of intriguing dynamical phenomena in complex systems such as polymers, liquid crystals, gels, colloids, and surfactant systems. We, the organizers, hope that the symposium will contribute to the increasing importance of the field in the coming years.
This series of books covers all areas of computational physics, collecting together reviews where a newcomer can learn about the state of the art regarding methods and results.The present volume emphasizes simulations of specific materials (polymers, water, and amphiphilic systems), and then discusses surfaces, percolation, and critical slowing-down. Also emphasized is complex optimization, such as spin glasses, simulated annealing, and the graph colouring problem.
Patterns are becoming the focal point of many areas of scientific endeavor in recent years owing to the progress of computer science, laboratory experiments and observations and analytical tools. This book brings together articles by the leading experts in these fields.
This NATO Advanced Study Institute centered on large-scale molecular systems: Quantum mechanics, although providing a general framework for the description of matter, is not easily applicable to many concrete systems of interest; classical statistical methods, on the other hand, allow only a partial picture of the behaviour of large systems. The aim of the ASI was to present both aspects of the subject matter and to foster interaction between the scientists working in these important areas of theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry. The quantum-mechanical part was mostly based on the operator-algebraic formulation of quantum mechanics and comprised quantum statistics of infinite systems with special em phasis on macroscopic observables, equilibrium conditions, irreversibility on the one hand, symmetry breaking for molecules in the radiation field and macroscopic quantum phenomena in the theory of superconductivity (BCS-theory) on the other hand. In addition, phase-space methods for many-body systems were also presented. Statistical physics was the main topic in the other lectures of the School; much emphasis was put on the statistical features of macros copic ("large") systems, the lectures dealt with mass and energy transport im polymers, in gels and in microemulsions, with aggregation and growth phenomena, with relaxation in complex, correlated systems, with conduction and optical properties of polymers, and with the means of describing disordered systems, above all fractals and related hierarchical models.
This volume is dedicated to Prof. Hiroomi Umezawa to honour of his retirement from the Killam Memorial Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Alberta. It is intended to summarize the contents of a Conference held at Perugia from May 28 to May 31 1992 aimed at bringing together researchers whose activity has been in close touch with the many topics addressed by Prof. Umezawa in his long scientific career.This book is a collection of invited papers on Field Theory and its many applications to describe collective properties of physical systems. The topics range from Condensed Matter Physics to General Relativity. It contains review papers by leading experts on: Finite Temperature Field Theory, Nonequilibrium Field Theory, Gauge Theories, General Relativity, Nonlinear Equations and Complex Systems.The conference occurred at a time of searching for new ways to use the unifying views of modern field theory to provide explanatory paradigms for a wide variety of phenomena. The book is a timely effort in this direction.The contents of the book will be appreciated by a readership fascinated by both the versatility and the rigorous structure of Quantum Field Theory.
Patterns are becoming the focal point of many areas of scientific endeavour in recent years owing to the progress of computer science, laboratory experiments and observations, and analytical tools. This book brings together articles by the leading experts in this field. The following topics are discussed in this volume: current status of pattern research with emphasis on real phenomena and new theoretical concepts; interdisciplinary subjects involving Statistical Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Fluid Mechanics, Nonequilibrium and Nonlinear Phenomena.
