This award will support continued collaborative research between Dr. Eugene Stanley, Center for Polymer Studies, Boston University and Dr. M. Daoud, Laboratoire Leon Brillouin, Centre d'Energie Nucleaire, Saclay, France. The major focus of this work is to seek a better understanding of the fundamental physical laws underlying a variety of phenomena of relevance to polymer physics and aggregation. The investigators propose to continue work recently begun on the following topics: 1. Swelling of branched polymers and gels. 2. Viscoelastic and other dynamical effects. 3. The effective dimension of the shortest path between two points in a fractal object. 4. Gelation by additive polymerization. 5. Physical basis of fracture phenomena. In addition, they propose to investigate a variety of new topics, including the possible role of magnetic frustration in high-temperature superconductivity. This work will benefit from the complementary expertise of Drs. Stanley and Daould in polymer physics, as well as the computing facilities available at the two institutions.
