EINDHOVEN PHYSICS SYMPOSIUM
February 7th 2025
Order and Chaos are part of our everyday life. Some things refuse to be accurately predicted, while some processes we can trust to happen in a certain way. Since both order and chaos are everywhere, we are bound to find them in physics. While trying to describe certain processes, their nature becomes apparent. Sometimes our perspectives shift. What seemed very chaotic actually obeys clear laws. Or the other way around: what seemed clear and simple is hard to predict. In our symposium we find ourselves investigating these two opposites. We will listen to interesting speakers, who are researchers in exciting fields of physics. Through their lectures, we may percieve a glimpse of the beauty that lies in the two opposing concepts.
Particle physicists aim to reduce the universe to its constituent particles and their interactions. The result is the Standard Model, an orderly system of a few forces and particles. However, the Standard Model has problems, related to the unexplained matter/antimatter imbalance, dark matter, and gravity. At the same time, particle accelerators can’t find deviations from the Standard Model. Particle physics is in a crisis! I will present a new class of small-scale experiments that uses cold samples of molecules to break the impasse - and restore order in the chaos.
Due to electromagnetic forces between charged particles, the plasma state - accounting for most of the visible matter in the universe - is subject to a vast range of instabilities and turbulence regimes. Turbulence is commonly viewed through the lense of Kolmogorov spectra, where energy is injected on large scales, then percolates without loss to successively smaller scales until it is dissipated at the smallest scales in the system. However, for many key plasma configurations - from fusion reactors to space - this view fails to account for observations. Instead, stable plasma waves, which are neglected in most simple models, remove energy on the large scales of injection, leading to rather different system dynamics. Here, the occurrence of damped waves and their role in saturating plasma turbulence is discussed. It is shown that accounting for stable eigenmodes of the system makes it possible to predict turbulent behavior with much greater accuracy, whether one studies astrophysical shear flows or plasmas in magnetic confinement experiments.
We know how electrons behave in 1,2,3 dimensions, but what about d=1.58? In this talk, I will first describe fractals, structures that may have a non-integer dimension. Then I will present experiments on electronic and photonic quantum simulators and explain how electrons and photons behave at fractal dimension. Finally, I will discuss the topological properties of electrons in self-formed bismuth fractals on InSb.
The liquid-to-glass transition is a common but extremely complex phenomenon that ranks among the deepest unsolved problems in theoretical condensed matter physics. This talk will highlight the fascinating physics of glass formation, its relevance to sustainable functional materials, and its surprising link with the behavior of living cells in dense cell layers and tissues. Ultimately, a better understanding of the physics of the glass transition could even lead to a more accurate prognosis for cancer metastasis.
This symposium was organized by the 2025 symposium committee of SVTN Johannes Diderik van der Waals.
Jeroen Kodde: Chairman
Louis Timmermans: Secretary and Comissioner of Promotion
Thijs Liebregts: Treasurer
Menno Smeets: Event Manager and Vice Chair
Annabel van Oijen: Commissioner of Promotion
Oscar de Vries: Commissioner of External Affairs
Marco Brunacci: Designer
This year's Physics Symposium will be hosted at the Cultuur & Kunst Eindhoven (CKE).
