Instructors: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Speck; Univ.-Prof. Dr. Peter Spichtinger
Event type:
Lecture/practice class
Displayed in timetable as:
08.128.724
Hours per week:
4
Credits:
6,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | -
Requirements / organisational issues:
Requirements:
Classical mechanics
Statistical physics (very helpful, but we will cover the basics in the course)
Fluid dynamics and thermodynamics (we will cover the basics in the course)
Contents:
The most recent Nobel price in physics has been awarded to acknowledge theoretical work towards the understanding and accurate modeling of complex systems. Complex systems occur in many different research areas in the natural sciences; important examples are Earth’s climate system and microscopic systems in disorder, as e.g. spin glasses. Although the scales of these systems are very different, the systems behave quite similar and can be investigated with the same methodological approaches.
Complex multiscale systems are characterized by large degrees of freedom, which makes it very difficult to investigate them with usual deterministic approaches. However, the dynamics of such systems seems to be noisy, which is a manifestation of the interaction of a huge number of processes (i.e., the noise subsumes the vast number of unobserved degrees of freedom). This appearance of multiscale complexity and stochasticity points to the use of stochastic models.
In this lecture we will investigate the physics behind the appreciated contributions, i.e. stochastic climate models and order from disorder in non-equilibrium systems. For this purpose we will start with an introduction to the methods, i.e. stochastic dynamics and stochastic differential equations (ordinary and partial differential equations). In the following, the two different parts of the Nobel prize physics will be explored, i.e. the topics “order from disorder” and “stochastic climate models”.
Each of these four blocks is concluded with a practical tutorial.
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