Soft Matter and Fluid Physics
I teach this course at every fall semester. The online organization of courses
in Stockholm University have moved to its own system, so the material here is updated once a year
after I finish teaching.
In reality, this is a very broad topic. I classify any topic to be within soft
matter if it is within the ambit of
Phys. Rev. E.
It is not easy to find good introductory material in one book.
There two ways to approach a subject like that. One is the way
biologists do, classify the objects and then study them individually.
For example, divide the objects into solid, normal fluid, polymers, liquid crystals,
biomaterial etc and then treat them individually.
Many books on Soft Matter takes this approach.
The other is to find find out the fundamental unity between
the topics, build a farm theoretical foundation and then
deiversify.
My goal is in this introductory course is to give a sound theoretical foundation.
I assume that the students know Statistical Mechanics at an elementary level
and know vector calculus and partial differential equations at the level
necessary for a graduate electrodynamics course.
Here I is some of the source material organized in degree of complexity.
- Arnold Sommerfeld's
Mechanics of Deformable
Bodies.. A fantastic inspiration and a brilliant
introduction to the subject although quite old now.
- Feynman lectures on elasticity and fluid mechanics are included in
the
second volume.
- Soft Condensed Matter by R.L. Jones.. Unfortunately, the
theoretical fundamental are not very well established here but is quite useful
for the polymer side of soft matter which I cover very little.
- Physics of Continuous Matter by B. Lautrup. Quite a nice
although a bit too long introduction.
- Modern Classical Physics: Optics, Fluids, Plasmas, Elasticity,
Relativity, and Statistical Physics Kip S. Thorne and Roger D. Blandford. A book that has won prizes and high praises. I had high hopes for this, unfortunately
the book is somewhat disappointing. The elasticity and fluid mechanics part is
good in patches. None of the authors are really familiar with recent advances
in these topics and it shows. There is very little deep insight beyond what was
already available in Feynman Lectures, Berkley Physics Courses; or Landau and Lifshitz.
-
Essentials of Soft Matter Science By Francoise Brochard-Wyart, Pierre Nassoy,
Pierre-Henri Puech. A brilliant book written by one of the modern greats of soft matter.
You should read this book if you are to work in soft matter. I would prefer a little
more detailed mathematical introduction.
- Two volume of Landau and Lifshitz; elasticity and fluid mechanics.
- Principles of Condensed Matter Physics Chaikin
and Lubensky. An excellent monograph but at a level too advanced for my course.