• Physics Core Facilities
  • Physics of Complex Systems
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Particle Physics and Astrophysics
  • SRITP
  • Seminars
    Date:
    08
    March, 2026
    Sunday
    Hour: 13:15-14:30

    The Clore Center for Biological Physics

    Collective dynamics of trail-interacting particles

    Ram Adar   |   

    Lubch at 12:45

    Trail interactions occur when past particle trajectories bias future motion, rendering the system out of thermodynamic equilibrium. While such systems are abundant in nature, their understanding is limited to the single-particle level or phenomenological mean-field theories. Here, we introduce a minimal model of many trail-interacting particles that extends this paradigm to the fluctuating collective level. Particles diffuse while depositing long-lasting repelling/attracting trails that act as a shared memory field, coupling their dynamics across time and space. Using stochastic density functional theory, we derive fluctuating hydrodynamic equations and analyze analytically and numerically the resulting behaviors. We show that memory, coupled with fluctuations, fundamentally reshapes collective dynamics; In the repulsive case, the particle density displays superdiffusive spreading characterized by transient clustering and ballistic motion; In the attractive case, the system condensates in finite time into frozen, localized states. Our results establish general principles for trail-interacting systems and reveal how persistent fields generate novel instabilities and self-organization.

  • Seminars
    Date:
    12
    March, 2026
    Thursday
    Hour: 13:15-14:30

    special seminar Clore Center for Biological Physics

    Geometric constraints during epithelial jamming

    Weismann Auditorium
    Prof. Jeffrey Fredberg   |   

    lunch at 12:45

    As an injury heals, an embryo develops or a carcinoma invades, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. But where do cell shape and its variability come from? Members of my lab have shown that cell shape and shape variability are mutually constrained through a relationship that is purely geometrical. Across many epithelial systems, shape variability collapses to a family of distributions that is common to all. Although we have characterized many of the molecular events that are needed for any complete theory of cell shape and cell packing, observations point to the hypothesis that jamming behavior at cellular scales of organization sets overriding geometric constraints.