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Complex Materials Viewed as Problems in Population Ecology
Peter Harrowell
School of Chemistry, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
The frontiers of research in material science, physical chemistry and condensed matter physics are increasingly characterised by a high degree of complexity, i.e. multiple components, highly correlated dynamics and persistent spatial heterogeneities. The textbook standards of description and explanation in chemistry and physics based on a bottom-up atomic-level treatments of structure and kinetics are increasingly difficult to apply in these circumstances. In contrast, the field of population ecology offers a range of powerful concepts and tools developed for exactly this type of complexity. In this talk we describe recent studies aimed at adapting the concepts of biodiversity and population stability to the description of the materials with an arbitrary degree of disorder, providing, for the first time, a characterization of structure that extends from crystals to disordered gels and glasses.
Y. Wang and P. Harrowell, Structural diversity in condensed matter : A general characterization of crystals, amorphous solids, and the structures between, J. Chem. Phys. 161, 074502 (2024).