General Information

Overview

• Date/Location
• Scientific background and motivation
• Travel instructions
• Accommodation
• Contact

Date/Location

Organizers:
M. Allen (Warwick), K. Binder (Mainz), P. Nielaba (Konstanz)

Duration:
From March 22 to March 24
The workshop will start on Thursday, 22.3. at 2 p.m. and will be finished on Saturday, 24.3. at lunch time.

Location:
Konstanz (Germany)

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Scientific background and motivation

Colloidal dispersions have been much investigated recently, by experimental and simulation methods and are of great interest for companies like Schlumberger, Henkel, Bayer or BASF. They can be both prepared and characterised in a controlled way, and the effective interaction between the colloidal particles can be tailored. Exciting questions on the many-body effects induced by co-operation and self-organisation of many particles can by studied by experiments as well as by computer simulations. This has been demonstrated for the bulk freezing transition, the kinetic glass transition and for the crystal nucleation rates. At present many interesting questions concern the behaviour of colloids in external shear-, electric-, laser-optical-, and magnetic fields as well as in a confined geometry. We intend to contribute to the classification of the different self-organisation processes of these important soft matter systems as a function of particle complexity and the kind of external manipulation.

The behaviour of liquid crystals near solid and fluid interfaces, and the effective interactions between suspended micro and nanoparticles, is also of great interest. Deformation of the director field creates long-ranged effective forces between suspended colloidal particles, the nature of which is dependent on the surface anchoring conditions. The detailed investigation of forces between pairs of spherical particles, platelets, or long rods, is amenable to study by weighted sampling Monte Carlo methods; the same approaches find an application in the related problem of protein-protein interactions in membranes. The modelling of suspensions of many particles in the surrounding liquid crystalling solvent is too expensive for fully atomistic or particle-based simulations, and requires a mesoscale approach. The process of aggregation of such particles at the interfaces of a liquid which is going through the isotropic-nematic phase transition is itself a topical area of soft condensed matter physics, as it leads to new soft solid structures. The workshop will discuss possible modelling approaches for such highly heterogeneous systems.

Colloid-polymer mixtures are model materials for the phase behavior of ordinary condensed matter,since the polymer coils (which may overlap each other) create the well-known depletion attraction between the colloids(which may not overlap either each other or the polymers),and varying the range of attraction via the size ratio(gyration radius of the polymer/radius of the spherical colloid particles) one can "tune" the phase diagram.There are gas-like,liquid-like and crystalline phases of the colloids,but the gas-liquid critical point disappears,or becomes metastable,if the range of the depletion attraction becomes rather short.
This behavior has been established,at least roughly,by experiment,theory,and simulation,but there is urgent need for more careful work to clarify the detailed behavior. Recent simulation advances have allowed to clarify the gas-liquid transition in the bulk as well as in confinement in slit pores and in random porous media.But there is need to explore in particular the solid-liquid and solid-"gas" transitions.This system is also very attractive to experiments (e.g.capillary waves have been directly visualized;dynamics of individual particles can be followed;etc.). Understanding the dynamics of these systems by simulations will require a multiscale approach, because of the hydrodynamic interactions mediated by the solvent.

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Travel instructions

From Stuttgart airport to the Konstanz train station:

There are frequent train connections from the airport to the train station in Konstanz. Train schedules for the 22.3. and the 24.3. are attached as pdf-files to the announcement, more informations can be obtained by reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en.


From the train station in Konstanz to the University campus:

From the train station the busses 9A or 9B go directly to the University campus (last stop). The trip takes about 12 to 15 minutes (9A/9B), and on Thursday and Friday every 15 minutes a bus departs from the train station (8:18, 8:30, 8:48,..). On Saturday the bus schedule is slightly different: bus 9 (9A/9B) departs at 8:01, 8:38 and 9:08 (and then every 30 minutes)-travel time to the campus is 15 minutes.

Detailed information about bus lines and schedules: http://www.sw.konstanz.de/verkehr/omnibus/linienplan.htm.

On the Campus:

The lecture room for the workshop is R712, which is located in the building left of the bus directly at the bus stop on the University campus.
Informations on the University and the Physics Department can be found at: www.uni-konstanz.de and www.uni-konstanz.de/physik/eng.

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Accommodation

• General accomodation information (with hotel informations) of the city Konstanz:
  http://www.konstanz-unterkunft.de/
  

• Youth hostel Konstanz:
  http://www.jugendherberge-konstanz.de/
  

• Hotel Barbarossa:
  Via bus lines 9a/b from train station to university, distance hotel - bus station: 10 minutes (by foot).
  Rooms at 45 Euro
  http://www.barbarossa-hotel.com/

• Gästehaus Centro
  Via bus lines 9a/b from train station to university, distance hotel - bus station: 2 minutes (by foot)
  Rooms at 49 Euro
  http://www.gaestehauscentro.de/

• Hotel Bayrischer Hof
  Via bus lines 9a/b from train station to university, distance hotel - bus station: 5-10 minutes (by foot)
  http://www.bayrischer-hof-konstanz.de/

• Petershof:
  Via bus lines 9a/b from bus stations Zähringerplatz or Sternenplatz to university, distance hotel - bus station: 5-10 minutes (by foot)
  Rooms at 66 Euro 
  http://www.petershof.de/index.php

• ABC-Hotel:
  Via bus lines 9a/b from bus stations Zähringerplatz to university, distance hotel - bus station: 5-10 minutes (by foot) 
  Rooms at 69 Euro 
  http://www.abc-hotel.de/

• Tweer Hotel:
  Via bus line 11 from bus stations Herosestr. to university, distance hotel - bus station: 3-5 minutes (by foot)
  Rooms at 70 Euro
  http://www.tweer-hotel.de/inhalt.htm

Contact