Mind Games At Kioloa 2008-StevenLade

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Hi, I'm Steve Lade.

I'm a PhD student in the Nonlinear Physics Centre at the Australian National University. The Nonlinear Physics Centre conducts a lot of research in nonlinear optics, including more recently metamaterials, and also Bose-Einstein condensates.

The topic of Ratchets, in the sense of Brownian motors, started off my PhD. Now I'm following two projects: trying to show the possibility of a ratchet for cold atoms in 'atom wires', and reconstructing (nonlinear, Langevin) equations of motion from time series of molecular motor positions. Ratchets and molecular motors have a strong historical link.

I love the idea of nonlinear dynamics, at least in my basic understanding of it: concepts like multistability and limit cycles and bifurcations and phase plane analysis. The world is not linear, though people often think in a linear way. I realise this isn't quite 'complex systems', but near enough I think to attend this workshop! I think nonlinear dynamics has really powerful ideas with potential for application outside traditional physics. I'm sure there are many such applications in practice already, but I'm just as sure there's more. Two more reasons I'm coming to this workshop are that I think interdisciplinary work is where the interesting things tend to happen, and that physicists (indeed all scientists) have a responsibility to contribute, where possible, to solving the world's problems.