Titles and Abstracts of Lectures
Matteo Baggioli
Title: The Beauty of Being Broken: Order, Disorder, and Defects in Complex Matter
Abstract:
Physics has a long-standing love affair with symmetry and order. Yet in real materials, perfection is often not where the interesting physics happens. Defects control phenomena ranging from plastic deformation and melting to dynamical and nonequilibrium transitions.
But a defect is usually defined relative to an underlying order. What happens when that order is hidden, approximate, amorphous, or even dynamical?
In this lecture series, I will introduce the physics of defects from this broader perspective. We will begin with the conventional connection between symmetry, topology, and defects, and use it as a starting point to understand how these ideas can be generalized. We will then discuss amorphous solids, where local rearrangements and generalized topological defects provide a new language for rigidity, plasticity, and melting. Next, we will examine systems with explicit or approximate symmetry breaking, asking how defects form when sharp phase transitions are replaced by crossovers. Finally, we will explore order and defects beyond equilibrium, including systems with spatial and temporal order.
The aim is to develop a unified way of thinking about defects not simply as imperfections of an ordered state, but as collective objects that can organize the physics of complex matter.
Lecture Program
Lecture 1 — Symmetry, topology, and conventional defects
Lecture 2 — Defects without order: amorphous solids
Lecture 3 — Defects without exact symmetry: crossovers and explicit breaking
Lecture 4 — Defects beyond equilibrium: space, time, and active matter