The Quantum Electrodynamics of Snowflakes, Ice skating, Exobiology and other such matters
by
John Wettlaufer(Nordita)
→
Europe/Stockholm
Klein Auditorium
Klein Auditorium
Description
The surface of ice exhibits the same richness of phase-transition
phenomena common to all materials. As such it acts as an ideal test bed
of both theory and experiment; it is readily available, transparent,
optically birefringent, and probing it in the laboratory does not require
cryogenics or ultrahigh vacuum apparatus. Systematic study reveals the
range of critical phenomena, equilibrium and nonequilibrium
phase-transitions, and, most relevant to this talk, premelting, that are
traditionally studied in more simply bound solids. Moreover, along with
helium, it is the only other condensed matter system that demonstrates
Casimir behavior. Thus, while this makes investigation of ice as a
material appealing from the perspective of the physicist, its ubiquity and
importance in the natural environment also make ice compelling to a broad
range of disciplines in the Earth and planetary sciences. In this talk the
physics of premelting of ice is described and a number of the many
tendrils of the basic phenomena as they play out on land, in the oceans,
and throughout the atmosphere and biosphere are developed.
