Workshop: Driven and active amorphous matter

Official Satellite of STATPHYS29 (Florence 2025)

The aim of this workshop is to bring together different communities that work on closely related themes including glass physics, dense active matter and memory formation, in order to explore recent progress and identify new research avenues at the interfaces between established fields.

The scientific rationale for the event comes from a number of scientific connections revealed in recent work. The well-studied setting of amorphous solids such as glasses being driven (further) out of equilibrium by mechanical deformation has been shown to have surprising analogies to driving by local, highly persistent forces in dense active matter. Novel types of non-equilibrium dynamics such as aging have also been discovered in active matter, providing new perspectives on aging in passive systems. Additional connections exist between responses to periodic driving by oscillatory shear and broader questions of memory formation in matter.

Abstract submission is now open, submission deadline 31 March 2025
Registration is now open, early bird deadline 30 April 2025