International Symposium on Non-Equilibrium Soft Matter 2010

Abstract

Soft matter is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary research field covering a range of subject areas including physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and engineering. Some of the important universal features of these materials are their mesoscopic structures and their dynamics. Due to the existence of such large-scale structures, which nevertheless exhibit interactions of the order of the thermal energy, soft matter can readily be taken out of equilibrium by imposing a weak external field such as an electric field, a mechanical stress or a shear flow. The importance of the coexistence of microscopic molecular dynamics and the mesoscopic/macroscopic structures and flows requires us to develop hierarchical approaches to understand the nonlinear and nonequilibrium phenomena, which is one of the central issues of current soft matter research.This special section presents selected contributions from the 'International Symposium on Non-Equilibrium Soft Matter 2010' held from 17–20 August 2010 in Nara, Japan, which aimed to describe recent advances in soft matter research focusing especially on its nonequilibrium aspects. The topics discussed cover statics and dynamics of a wide variety of materials ranging from traditional soft matter like polymers, gels, emulsions, liquid crystals and colloids to biomaterials such as biopolymers and biomembranes. Among these studies, we highlighted the physics of biomembranes and vesicles, which has attracted great attention during the last decade; we organized a special session for this active field. The work presented in this issue deals with (1) structure formation in biomembranes and vesicles, (2) rheology of polymers and gels, (3) mesophases in block copolymers, (4) mesoscopic structures in liquid crystals and ionic liquids, and (5) nonequilibrium dynamics.This symposium was organized as part of a research project supported by the Grant-in-Aid for the priority area 'Soft Matter Physics' (2006–2010) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan. We thank those who contributed to this symposium as well as members of the 'Soft Matter Physics' project for their valuable discussions and collaborations.Non-equilibrium soft matter contentsInsights on raft behavior from minimal phenomenological models G Garbès Putzel and M SchickDynamical membrane curvature instability controlled by intermonolayer friction Anne-Florence Bitbol, Jean-Baptiste Fournier, Miglena I Angelova and Nicolas PuffNumerical investigations of the dynamics of two-component vesicles Takashi Taniguchi, Miho Yanagisawa and Masayuki ImaiAsymmetric distribution of cone-shaped lipids in a highly curved bilayer revealed by a small angle neutron scattering technique Y Sakuma, N Urakami, T Taniguchi and M ImaiHydration, phase separation and nonlinear rheology of temperature-sensitive water-soluble polymers Fumihiko Tanaka, Tsuyoshi Koga, Isamu Kaneda and Françoise M WinnikMorphology and rheology of an immiscible polymer blend subjected to a step electric field under shear flow H Orihara, Y Nishimoto, K Aida, Y H Na, T Nagaya and S UjiieSurfactant-induced friction reduction for hydrogels in the boundary lubrication regime Kosuke Kamada, Hidemitsu Furukawa, Takayuki Kurokawa, Tomohiro Tada, Taiki Tominaga, Yukihiro Nakano and Jian Ping GongFabrication and structural analysis of polyrotaxane fibers and films Yasuhiro Sakai, Kentaro Ueda, Naoya Katsuyama, Koji Shimizu, Shunya Sato, Jun Kuroiwa, Jun Araki, Akira Teramoto, Koji Abe, Hideaki Yokoyama and Kohzo ItoMicellization kinetics of diblock copolymers in a homopolymer matrix: a self-consistent field study Raghuram Thiagarajan and David C MorseHierarchical self-assembly of two-length-scale multiblock copolymers Gerrit ten Brinke, Katja Loos, Ivana Vukovic and Gerrit Gobius du SartKaleidoscopic morphologies from ABC star-shaped terpolymers Yushu Matsushita, Kenichi Hayashida, Tomonari Dotera and Atsushi TakanoDirect and inverted nematic dispersions for soft matter photonics I Muševič, M Škarabot and M HumarSolvation effects in phase transitions in soft matter Akira Onuki, Takeaki Araki and Ryuichi OkamotoNon-equilibrium dynamics of 2D liquid crystals driven by transmembrane gas flow Kazuyoshi Seki, Ken Ueda, Yu-ichi Okumura and Yuka TabeRoles of bond orientational ordering in glass transition and crystallization Hajime TanakaShear banding in thixotropic and normal emulsions José Paredes, Noushine Shahidzadeh-Bonn and Daniel BonnEffects of hydrodynamic interactions in binary colloidal mixtures driven oppositely by oscillatory external fields Adam Wysocki and Hartmut LöwenOnsager's variational principle in soft matter Masao Doi