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Abstract |
Memory formation and ageing are abundant in many soft matter systems. The disorder underlying these
systems gives rise to a rich energy landscape, consisting of a large number of metastable states. These
landscapes are accompanied by a plethora of pathways, along which such systems can evolve when exposed
to a varying temperature or mechanical load. The resulting dynamics can be rather complex, giving rise to
dynamically critical phenomena such as irreversibility and yielding. At the same time, such system exhibit
parallels with the adaptive evolution of biological populations in time-varying environments. In this talk I will
present a general framework to analyze the dynamics and memory formation of driven disordered systems. I
will then show how this framework can be applied to understand both the response of a cyclically sheared
amorphous solid, as well as the antibiotic resistance evolution of a microbial population subject to time-
varying drug concentrations. |
