A CECAM Workshop on Metastability and Landscapes in Complex (Materials) Systems, Lyons, France, May 22 - 24, 2003

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

Van Tassel, Paul R Yale University The European Center for Atomic and Molecular Calculation (CECAM) workshop will be held May 22-24, 2003 at the Ecole Normale Superior in Lyons, France (www.cecam.fr). The objective of the workshop is to bring together specialists from different fields in which metastability occurs (biology, glass physics, adsorption phenomena, etc.) in order to clarify difference/similarities in the observed behavior and ultimately develop/extend numerical methods to treat metastability. Specifically questions to be answered included the following: 1. How does metastability differ (if at all) when brought about by the thermal quench versus a shift in the energy landscape? 2. Can methods developed primarily to treat systems undergoing a thermal quench be applied to systems undergoing a shift in energy landscape? 3. What common features of metastability are exhibited by systems as diverse as glasses, biological molecules, and confined fluids? Proceedings of this workshop will be made available by the principal investigators.