The conference "Fronts, Fluctuations, & Growth", sponsored by the Michigan
Center for Theoretical Physics and organized by C. Doering, L. Sander, P.
Semereka and R. Ziff, was held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor,
May 20-25, 2002. Twenty five speakers gave in-depth presentations of
frontier research into questions of front propagation and growth processes
in mesoscopic and microscopic systems where fluctuations play a crucial
role in the dynamics. The invited presentations were:
- Ute Ebert (Cent. V. Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam)
The
universality class of pulled fronts
- Igor Sokolov (Humboldt University, Berlin)
On the importance of being
discrete: The A+B->2A reaction in one dimension
- Sid Redner (Boston University)
Growing Networks
- Giovanni Russo (Catania University, Italy)
Level set methods for the
evolution of faceted crystals
- Weinan E (Princeton University)
The Heterogeneous Multiscale Method for
the Dynamics of Defects and Interfaces
- James Sneyd (Massey University, Auckland, NZ)
A Tale of Two Cells
- Martin Falcke (Max-Planck Institute, Dresden)
Nucleation oscillations
of intracellular calcium dynamics
- Yannis Kevrekidis (Princeton University)
Patch Dynamics
- Tim Schulze (University of Tennessee)
A hybrid scheme for simulating
epitaxial growth
- Jim Evans (Iowa State)
Fluctuations and Reaction Fronts in a 'hybrid'
Atomistic Model for CO-Oxidation
- Eric Brunet (University of Geneva)
Perturbating fronts propagating into
an unstable state
- Jack Xin (University of Texas, Austin)
Fronts and Fluctuation in noisy
advection reaction-diffusion equations
- Carl Mueller (University of Rochester)
Random travelling waves and
particle systems
- Joe Conlon (University of Michigan)
A Guide to Homogenization
- Herbie Levine (U.C.S.D.)
Darwinian evolution as front propagation on a
fitness landscape
- David Kessler (Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv)
Instabilities in Lattice
Models of Fracture
- Ray Kapral (University of Toronto)
Front Explosions in
Reaction-Diffusion Systems
- Jaume Casademunt (University of Barcelona)
Scaling of Fluctuations in
Fronts with Non-local Dynamics
- Dimitri Vvedensky (Imperial College, London)
Equations of Motion for
Driven Lattice Models
- Russ Caflisch (UCLA)
Modelling and Simulation for Epitaxial Growth with
Elastic Strain
- Katja Lindenberg (U.C.S.D)
Instabilities and Spatio-Temporal Patterns
Induced by Global Switching
- John Pearson (Los Alamos)
The Skid Row Relay Revisited: travelling waves
that slow down with increasing diffusion coefficient in a "1 component"
reaction-diffusion system with discrete sources
- Mark Gyure (HRL Laboratories, Los Angeles)
Fluctuations and island
nucleation in semiconductor epitaxy
- Esteban Moro (Madrid)
Interval fluctuations effects on pulled fronts
- Jacques Amar (University of Toledo)
Rate-equation approach to
island-size distributions and capture zones in submonolayer epitaxial
growth
Other highlights of the meeting included a stimulating poster session, a
tasty conference dinner and an extremely lively closing discussion. But
for some conference participants perhaps the most exciting activity was
their first major league baseball game, where we saw the Detroit Tigers
play the Cleveland Indians on a spectacular spring evening!