Theoretical study of soft matter systems

软物质是一个涉及物理、化学、生物和材料科学的交叉学科研究领域。它研究相对容易变形的物理系统，以响应外部和内部的物理和化学条件。例子包括胶体、聚合物、凝胶、液晶和几种生物系统。这些材料与传统的固态材料竞争，有时甚至超过传统的固态材料。软物质理论是由诺贝尔奖获得者皮埃尔-吉勒斯·德·吉恩等先驱创立的，在过去的半个世纪里，软物质理论在基础研究和应用研究方面都有了巨大的新发展。 他说，这项建议提出了一个全面的软物质理论研究计划，该计划整合了一些涉及聚合物、膜和液晶的重要和具有挑战性的问题。在我们的理论治疗中，一个很好的共同点是使用统计物理来研究这些系统。一些新的方向包括：建立由取向相关的分子组成的半柔性聚合物熔体的Flory-Huggins相互作用能和不可压缩条件的框架，定义带电小泡构象的瑞利不稳定性的相关性，聚合物密度波动引起的嵌入粒子上的Casimir力的开始，小泡移位动力学，小泡的平板化和珍珠动力学，DNA堆积结构，缺陷液晶态之间的转变动力学，以及限制中的液晶聚合物。基于这一提议的令人兴奋的发现将大大推进对软物质的基本理解-建造明天新材料的游乐场。 在过去的10年里，我的研究小组已经开发出了尖端工具，可以很容易地利用这些工具来解决这些新的方向。它们包括：蠕虫状高分子链的自洽场理论，基于流体表面三角剖分的三维囊泡模拟，液晶系统的密度泛函模型，以及基于Wang-Landau类型重量的蒙特卡罗模拟。由于其明确的设计，这个多方面的研究项目非常适合培养硕士和博士水平的研究生和博士后研究员。研究问题将在智力上挑战我的研究团队，因此受过培训的HQP将在他们的道路上对学术和工业研究产生实质性影响。

Soft matter is a cross disciplinary research field involving physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science. It studies physical systems that can be deformed relatively easily in response to external and internal physical and chemical conditions. Examples include colloids, polymers, gels, liquid crystals, and several biological systems. These materials compete with and sometimes outperform the traditional solid-state materials. Founded by pioneers such as Nobel Prize winner Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, soft matter theory is a field that has seen vast new developments in the last half century, in both fundamental and applied research.      This proposal presents a comprehensive soft-matter-theory research program that integrates a number of important and challenging problems involving polymers, membranes, and liquid crystals. In our theoretical treatment, a common ground is the use of statistical physics in studying these systems. Some new directions include: the development of a framework for the Flory-Huggins interaction energy and incompressibility condition of semiflexible polymer melts consisting of molecules for which the orientational dependence is importance, the relevance of Rayleigh instability in defining the conformation of charged vesicles, the onset of Casimir force caused by fluctuating polymer densities on embedded particles, vesicle translocation kinetics, vesicle tabulation and pearling dynamics, DNA packing structure, transition kinetics between defect liquid-crystal states, and liquid-crystal polymers in confinement. The exciting discoveries based on this proposal will significantly advance the fundamental understanding of soft matter --- a playground for constructing new materials of tomorrow.       Over the last 10 years, my research group has developed cutting-edge tools that can be readily exploited to tackle these new directions. They include: the self-consistent field theory for wormlike polymer chains, three-dimensional vesicle modeling based on triangulation of a fluid surface, density-functional models for liquid-crystal systems, and Monte Carlo simulations based on Wang-Landau type weights. By its explicit design, this multifaceted research program is ideally suited for training MSc- and PhD-level graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The research problems will intellectually challenge my research group hence the trained HQP in their pathways to make substantial impact in academic and industrial research.