Clustering phenomena are ubiquitous with applications ranging from raindrops to galaxies, and from facebook to traffic jams. A key question we address is: how fast do clusters grow how large, and even effectively infinite?

Problems such as traffic flow have conserved quantities but no absorbing state, leading to phase separation between a localised condensate (e.g. traffic jam) and a background (e.g. flowing traffic) at critical density.

 Application areas:

• weather & climate
• social sciences (traffic and transport modeling)
• physics (granular media, Bose Einstein condensation).
• biology (molecular transport, ant trails)

 

People:

• Robin Ball
• Colm Connaughton
• Stefan Grosskinsky
• Charo I Del Genio