Objectives

Structure formation is currently one of the most interesting topics in many different disciplines. The selforganizing transition from a disordered cloud of "particles" to an ordered system starts immediately with the big bang and is going on till today at lower temperatures. "Particles" can be quarks, nuclei, electrons, atoms, molecules, nanosystems, or surfaces, all the electrons acting collectively as a Fermi gas, all the atoms located on mirror planes of a crystal or other substructures. With an increasing complexity new "particles" / "systems" get formed at many different stages on many different length- and time scales. Systems may be anorganic or living, may be on a length scale between quarks and galaxies or even larger, may form within femtoseconds or all along the development of the universe.

It is in particular the step from a cloud of atoms to the ordered state of e.g. a crystal, dominating our surroundings with all the homogeneous and heterogeneous phases, which is still not well understood. On the other hand, physical and chemical properties of materials exclusively depend on their structure and hence on the final outcome of structure formation. Whereas the formation of small units as molecules are well understood, and the final products, the ordered e.g. crystalline state, can well be described, the formation of the intermediate range is extremely difficult to handle, its complexity already huge.

The DAAD Summer-Academy will mainly focus on structure-forming processes in condensed matter and will attract the participants interest on a fascinating complex and upcoming field. It will present general principles and shows in addition relations to other disciplines like astro- and high-energy physics.