07/08/2021
By Viktor Podolskiy
MS Candidate: Justin Jozokos
Time/Location: The defense will be held on July 27 at 11 a.m. via Zoom. Please contact Justin Jozokos for meeting information if you are interested in attending.
Committee:
Johannes Zwanikken, Assistant Professor, UML and TU Delft
Erno Sajo, Professor, UML
Viktor Podolskiy, Professor, UML
Abstract:
Active matter physics, as opposed to passive/inertial matter physics, is the physics of particles that propel themselves rather than simply just moving under their own inertia. Collections of active particles have resisted traditional methods of statistical physics. Simulations of a certain kind of two-dimensional active matter gas have been performed and their properties studied in detail, in particular, that these active particles have a tendency to form clusters. Justin's work consists in mathematically modeling the behavior of these clusters from a first-principles approach. These models include a model for the growth of clusters over time, a model predicting a power law relationship between the speed of a cluster and its size, a model predicting a power law relationship between a cluster's angular speed and its size, a model predicting a weak attractive interaction between clusters (even though there are only repulsive interactions built into the simulation), a model attempting to predict how large clusters can grow before breaking apart, and two attempts at calculating what the distribution of cluster sizes ought to be in an equilibrium scenario. These models are all, to some degree or another, in agreement with data collected from the simulations.