Friday, November 17th in the NSCL Seminar Room

                             Stefan Frauendorf

                  University of Notre Dame

Emergent Phenomena in Mesoscopic Physics

Emergence is a central concept of complex systems, which denotes
 the appearance of simple patterns on a higher structural level than
 the interacting constituents. In Physics, mesoscopic systems allow us
 to study how such phenomena emerge with increasing particle number.
 Since emergent phenomena are not sensitive to the details of the
 interactions between the constituent particles, they may appear in
 non-nuclear mesoscopic systems quite analogous to nuclei.

 I compare atomic clusters and electronic nanostructures with nuclei.
 As examples, I discuss the liquid-gas phase boundary, the crystal
 lattice, superconductivity, superfluidity, and phase transitions in
 mesoscopic systems as compared to their macroscopic limit in bulk matter.
 Other emergent features, as shell structure, remain mesoscopic, i.e.
 they are only important up to not too large a number of particles.