Seminars & Colloquia Calendar

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MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
HILL 705
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Cyrill Muratov - New Jersey Institute of Technology

  Date/Time/Location
Thursday, February 20th , 12:00pm; Hill 705

Title
 "The mathematics of charged liquid drops"

In this talk, I will present an overview of recent analytical developments in the studies of equilibrium configurations of liquid drops in the presence of repulsive Coulombic forces. Due to the fundamental nature of Coulombic interaction, these problems arise in systems of very different physical nature and on vastly different scales: from femtometer scale of a single atomic nucleus to micrometer scale of droplets in electrosprays to kilometer scale of neutron stars. Mathematically, these problems all share a common feature that the equilibrium shape of a charged drop is determined by an interplay of the cohesive action of surface tension and the repulsive effect of long-range forces that favor drop fragmentation. More generally, these problems present a prime example of problems of energy driven pattern formation via a competition of long-range attraction and long-range repulsion. In the talk, I will focus on two classical models - Gamow's liquid drop model of an atomic nucleus and Rayleigh's model of perfectly conducting liquid drops. Surprisingly, despite a very similar physical background these two models exhibit drastically different mathematical properties. I will discuss the basic questions of existence vs. non-existence, as well as some qualitative properties of global energy minimizers in these models, and present the current state of the art for this class of geometric problems of calculus of variations. 

THERE WILL BE A BROWN BAG LUNCH

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