Active Matter and Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics : Lecture Notes of the Les Houches Summer School: September 2018

From molecular motors to bacteria, from crawling cells to large animals, active entities are found at all scales in the biological world. Active matter encompasses systems whose individual constituents irreversibly dissipate energy to exert self-propelling forces on their environment. Over the past twenty years, scientists have managed to engineer synthetic active particles in the lab, paving the way towards smart active materials. This book gathers a pedagogical set of lecture notes that cover topics in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and active matter. These lecture notes stem from the first summer school on Active Matter delivered at the Les Houches school of Physics. The lectures covered four main research directions: collective behaviours in active-matter systems, passive and active colloidal systems, biophysics and active matter, and nonequilibrium statistical physics―from passive to active.

Julien Tailleur, Director of Research, CNRS, University of Paris,Gerhard Gompper, Professor of Physics, University of Cologne,M. Cristina Marchetti, Professor of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara,Julia M. Yeomans, Professor of Physics, Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford,Christophe Salomon, Director of Research at CNRS, Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, ENS Paris

Julien Tailleur is a statistical physicist working at CNRS and Université de Paris. He has worked on a broad range of problems in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and its applications to biophysics and active matter.

Gerhard Gompper is Professor of Physics at University of Cologne and Institute Director at Forschungszentrum Jülich. He was educated at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, where he also earned his PhD.

Cristina Marchetti is Professor of Physics at the University of California Santa Barbara. She was educated in Italy at the University of Pavia, earned her Ph.D. in the U.S. at the University of Florida, and joined the faculty at UC Santa Barbara in 2018.

Julia Yeomans is Professor of Physics and Head of the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and Pauline Chan Fellow at St Hilda's College Oxford.

Christophe Salomon is Directeur de Recherches au CNRS, Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, ENS Paris.