Eran Bouchbinder Research Group

The Bouchbinder group focuses on various nonequilibrium problems in condensed-matter physics, materials physics, statistical physics, geophysics, and biophysics. The physical problems of interest are typically characterized by a unique coupling between widely separated time and length scales, where the major intellectual challenge is to build conceptual and mathematical bridges that allow understanding how collective microscopic processes give rise to the emergence of a wealth of macroscopic behaviors.

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Examples include: (i) the nearly singular localized region near the edge of a crack, which controls the strength and structural integrity of a macroscopic piece of material (ii) the intermittent, inhomogeneous, microscopic particle rearrangements in a disordered solid, whose accumulation in space and time determines its macroscopic plastic response (iii) the collective dynamics of micron-scale contact asperities that control the physics of spatially extended frictional interfaces or (iv) the collective cellular processes that give rise to coherent cell-level contractility and motility. Our ultimate goal is to develop continuum-level constitutive laws, field theories, and nonequilibrium thermodynamic frameworks with quantitative predictive powers applicable to a wide range of problems.

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