Non-equilibrium statistical physics
(Prof. Dr. Peter Sollich)

News

Dec 2020: Poster with a graphical overview of project areas for ideas for Bachelor and Master projects now online
Nov 2020: New paper on Aging in active glasses out in Physical Review Letters
Nov 2020: New articles published including Tractable nonlinear memory functions, Aging in mean-field elastoplastic models and a Europhysics News feature contribution on The nonlinearity of life
Sept 2020: Paper on Crossover in glassy dynamics between entropic and energetic barriers by Diego Tapias published in JSTAT
Sept 2020: Filipe Thewes joins group from Brazil as new PhD student
July 2020: New article on Dynamics of extrinsic noise in biochemical subnetworks out in Journal of Chemical Physics
May 2020: Paper on Extreme active matter at high densities by Rituparno Mandal and collaborators published in Nature Communications
Mar 2020: Now recruiting for two-year postdoc position in non-equilibrium statistical physics, with flexible starting date from summer 2020
Feb 2020: Rituparno Mandal awarded Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship for work on "Rheology and Mechanics of Active Glasses''
Jan 2020: New paper in Physical Review Letters on a nucleation theory for yielding of almost defect-free crystals
Jan 2020: Now recruiting for DFG-funded joint project with Prof. Matthias Krüger on "Dynamics of dense mixtures: Kinetic and thermodynamic effects in non-equilibrium fluctuations, phase separation and structure formation''
Jan 2020: Moshir Harsh joins group as PhD student
Sept 2019: Paper in Physical Review Letters on athermal aging published as Editor's Choice
Sept 2019: Paper on non-affine displacement fluctuations and crystal defects published in Physical Review E
May 2019: Six contributions from the group accepted at StatPhys27
Oct 2018: Coordinating three-week programme on Stochastic Dynamics on Networks at MPI Dresden with Manfred Opper and Guido Sanguinetti

Research focus

The focus of our research group is on the statistical physics of systems that are out of equilibrium. This is an area where there are many fundamental question, and in the group we develop theoretical tools to tackle these (e.g. trajectory thermodynamics, approximation techniques for path integrals).
We also work on a number of application areas including (see also this poster)

Aging and mechanical deformation in athermal systems
Phase separation in complex mixtures
Active systems, driven by e.g. self-propulsion or non-Gaussian noise
Subnetworks and dynamical modules in protein interaction and gene regulation networks
Dynamics on networks and applications to glassy physics
Statistical physics tools for inference and machine learning

Publications

You can find an overview of the group's publications on

Open positions and Bachelor / Master theses

We welcome new members with an interest in the fascinating world of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. For possible topics of Bachelor, Master or PhD theses please contact the group leader, Prof. Peter Sollich
See also this poster for a graphical overview of topics and project ideas