9634596 Toner This is a new award for a theoretical project comprised of three components, all of which involve strongly fluctuating systems with many degrees of freedom. These components are: (1) the theory of flocking, i.e., collective motion of large swarms of organisms that attempt to follow their neighbors; (2) a study of phase transitions in tethered membranes and, in particular, the transitions from the crumpled phase to the tubule phase and the tubule to the flat phase; (3) application of hydrodynamics to model the dynamical evolution of large fluctuations in smectic A liquid crystals as measured by time resolved x-ray scattering. %%% This theoretical research will study a number of topics in the physics of soft condensed matter, that is, materials such as polymers and liquid crystals (used in video displays). The research also involves studies of flocking. Flocking is the ability of large groups of entities, such as birds, to almost instantaneously change direction as a group. How can individual birds know to all move at the same time? This also applies to biological organisms. ***
