Investigating biological matter with theoretical nuclear physics methods

Investigating Biological Matter with Theoretical Nuclear Physics Methods

The internal dynamics of strongly interacting systems and that of bio-polymers such as proteins display several important analogies, despite the huge difference in their characteristic energy and length scales. For example, in all such systems, collective excitations, cooperative transitions and phase transitions emerge as the result of the interplay of strong correlations with quantum or therm...

Theoretical Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Astrophysics

Our research unit is part of an Interuniversity Attraction Poles (IAP) program, ​BriX (The Belgian Research Initiative on eXotic nuclei for atomic, nuclear and astrophysics studies), in which we collaborate with other nuclear-physics groups, both theoretical and experimental, in Belgium and abroad. Through this collaboration, there is a possibility for very motivated ULB students to realize ...

Mathematical Methods of Theoretical Physics

Self-consistent Methods in Nuclear Structure Physics

Self-consistent methods have been used in the low-energy nuclear structure studies over many years, and represent a mature field with numerous successful applications. A number of computer codes solving the nuclear Hartree-Fock (HF) problem have already been developed. Two types of effective nucleon-nucleon interactions have been mainly employed. Starting with the work of Vautherin and Brink 6 ...

Brownian motion: a paradigm of soft matter and biological physics

This is a pedagogical introduction to Brownian motion on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s 1905 paper on the subject. After briefly reviewing Einstein’s work in its contemporary context, we pursue some lines of further developments and applications in soft condensed matter and biology. Over the last century Brownian motion became promoted from an odd curiosity of marginal scie...