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Memory Formation in Driven Disordered Systems - Dead or Alive
Memory formation and ageing are abundant in many soft matter systems. The disorder underlying these systems gives rise to a rich energy landscape, consisting of a large number of metastable states. These landscapes are accompanied by a plethora of pathways, along which such systems can evolve when exposed to a varying temperature or mechanical load. The resulting dynamics can be rather complex, giving rise to dynamically critical phenomena such as irreversibility and yielding. At the same time, such system exhibit parallels with the adaptive evolution of biological populations in time-varying environments. In this talk I will present a general framework to analyze the dynamics and memory formation of driven disordered systems. I will then show how this framework can be applied to understand both the response of mechanical systems with disorder as well as the antibiotic resistance evolution of a microbial population subject to time-varying drug concentrations.