Göttinger Graduiertenzentrum für Neurowissenschaften, Biophysik und Molekulare Biowissenschaften

Vollmer, Jürgen, Prof. Dr.


  • 1989 Doctoraal Examen in Theoretical Physics, University of Utrecht (NL)
  • 1994 PhD supervised by Prof. Dr. H. Thomas at the Universität Basel (CH)
  • 2001 Habilitation, Universität Essen
  • 2003 – 2007 Assistant Professor, Philipps-Universität Marburg
  • since 2007 Group Leader at the Dept. Dynamics of Complex Fluids, Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
  • since 2009 Associate Professor at the Faculty of Physics of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen




Major Research Interests
Presently, rapid progress in imaging and image processing opens a new window to observe complex processes with rapidly improving space and time resolution. The resulting opportunities to address fundamental questions of statistical physics constitute the focus of our research. I provide here three representative examples of recent work:
1. Motivated by the finding that metabolism fluctuations can play a role in biological processes, we have explored strategies to systematically reduce model complexity without altering the fluctuations [Phys. Rev. Lett.108 (2012) 228101]. Our next steps deal with the appropriate definition of entropy and entropy changes in the systems [arXiv:1212.4728].
2. Granular Media, where time reversibility is broken already on the level of the equations of motion. As a result peculiar violations of equipartition can arise. They may lead for instance to a sustained drift of granular Brownian particles [Phys. Rev. E 87 (2013) 040201]. Other challenges are posed by modeling phase transitions in these systems approaches [Phys. Rev. E 86 (2012) 031301; Phys. Rev. E 82 (2010) 061305; arXiv:1210.3247].
3. For selected problems we advance the theory in parallel with developing and improving experimental techniques and data analysis tools, in order to achieve a detailed quantitative comparison. This has recently been achieved for the condensation of water droplets on surfaces, where we hence were able to show that surface diffusion and other microscopic processes alter the large scale self-organization of a fractal droplet distribution [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109 (2012) 068701]. Other projects in this field address droplet distributions in phase separating systems [Exp. Fluids 52 (2012) 1187].
More information about our research activities is available at the public pages of the PoSO wiki.
http://poso.ds.mpg.de/group


Homepage Department/Research Group
http://www.dcf.ds.mpg.de/index.php?id=vollmer


Selected Recent Publications


  • J. Blaschke, J. Vollmer (2013) Granular Brownian motors: Role of gas anisotropy and inelasticity. Phys. Rev. E 87, 040201; arXiv:1302.2877.
  • J. Blaschke, T. Lapp, B. Hof, J. Vollmer (2012) Breath Figures: Nucleation, Growth, Coalescence, and the Size Distribution of Droplets. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 068701; arXiv:1206.6705.
  • T. Lapp, M. Rohloff, J. Vollmer, B. Hof (2012) Particle tracking for polydisperse sedimenting droplets in phase separation. Experiments in Fluids 52, 1187; arXiv:1107.1194.
  • B. Altaner, J. Vollmer (2012) Fluctuation-Preserving Coarse Graining for Biochemical Systems. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 228101; arXiv:1112.4745.
  • B. Altaner, S. Grosskinsky, S. Herminghaus, L. Katthän, M. Timme, J. Vollmer (2012) Network representations of nonequilibrium steady states: Cycle decompositions, symmetries, and dominant paths. Phys. Rev. E 85, 041133; arXiv:1105.2178.