Van Saarloos Group - Soft Matter Theory

The focus of our theoretical research is understanding the behaviour of soft condensed matter, physical matter which is deformed or structurally altered by thermal fluctuations or small stresses.

Soft condensed matter comprises a diverse set of physical systems, such as polymers, liquid crystals and colloidal systems, but is also ubiquitous at home (mayonnaise, LCD’s) and in biophysics. As soft matter easily deforms and flows, it often exhibits the formation of nonequilibrium patterns. We e.g. recently used concepts and techniques from this field to predict flow instabilities in polymers and study fluid turbulence.