Soft Packings, Nested Clusters, and Condensed Matter (19w5142)

The Casa Matemática Oaxaca (CMO) will host the "Soft Packings, Nested Clusters, and Condensed Matter" workshop in Oaxaca, from September 29, 2019 to October 4, 2019.

Modeling the geometry of condensed matter is a challenging problem. The ongoing revolution in materials science sparked by the discovery of aperiodic crystals in 1982 demands the rapid development of new discrete geometric concepts and tools needed to study aperiodic structures. The classical ``building block'' model of crystal structure is fast yielding to new models in which nested atomic clusters link and perhaps overlap. Yet cluster models are still undeveloped geometrically, and poorly understood physically. The workshop focuses on “soft packing” and “nested clustering” phenomena in discrete geometric structures and on their applications to unraveling the internal atomic structure of solids and fluids. A key tool in this synthesis is the theory of discrete point sets developed by B.N. Delaunay and his students to give the structure of matter a modern footing. The workshop brings together researchers from a broad range of areas in mathematics and other sciences to share recent developments and emerging directions, encourage new collaborative ventures, and achieve further progress on fundamental questions in the field.

The Casa Matemática Oaxaca (CMO) in Mexico, and the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) in Banff, are collaborative Canada-US-Mexico ventures that provide an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station in Banff is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT). The research station in Oaxaca is funded by CONACYT