ON THE INFLUENCE OF STRUCTURE ON DYNAMIC AND TRANSPORT PROCESSES IN SELF-ASSEMBLED PHYSICAL SYSTEMS ("ESPRODITA")

Self-assembled systems are ubiquitous both in nature and technology, and constitute one of the most active scientific fields, due to the possibilities that this process offers in view of manufacturing microscopic structures (inaccessible otherwise) and also to its realization in a wide range of physics scales, from the atomic or molecular playing a role in the formation of crystals, to the macroscopic scales involved in the genesis of the Internet. In spite of the boom they have experimented, especially in the domain of the experimental design of specific-purpose self-assemblies, little is known however at the theoretical level about those systems and their physical properties, especially concerning dynamic self-assemblies at the mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. In the present project we intend to contribute in the theoretical study of these kind of systems, approaching them from a novel and original perspective, consisting in considering them from the point of view of their structure (described in terms of a network defined by their elemental constituents plus their mutual interactions), and the relation of the latter with their function and most relevant dynamic physical properties. The general objectives proposed in our project can be summarized in the following points: 1) Characterize and model the structure and function of several macroscopic self-assemblies, such as peer-to-peer information exchange systems, or the correlation networks of seismic activity. 2) Study the dynamic transport properties in macroscopic self-assemblies with heterogeneous structure; 3) Highlight the influence of structure with respect to the mechanical response of several paradigmatic systems in the field of condensed matter; 4) Explore the possibility of universality in the jamming transition and the stationary dynamics in those systems, starting from the topology and evolution of their characteristic interaction network.