Soft and Complex Matter Lab
Department of Condensed Matter Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University.
PI Yoav Lahini
In a nutshell
We are an experimental group interested in the physics of complex, disordered, and nonlinear soft matter systems in far from equilibrium conditions.
We are part of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University.
We are active members of interdisciplinary centers within the university: the Center for Physics and Chemistry of Living Systems, the Center for Light-Matter Interactions, the Center for Nano-science and Nano-technology, and the Sagol School of Neuroscience.
You can find us on the 3rd floor of the Shenkar Physics building
You can find our updated list of publications here
WE'RE HIRING!
We have open positions for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. Undergrad projects are also available.
Current research
Non-equilibrium complex matter
We study the dynamics and mechanics of disordered systems, materials, and meta-materials, in order to characterize and understand the mechanisms underlying their complex behaviors. To this end, we use a range of experimental techniques enabling simultaneous measurements across a wide range of time and length scales, including ultra-fast imaging, advanced microscopy, multi-scale mechanical characterization, optical and x-ray tomography, and more.
Crumpled matter
A crumpled thin sheet is a fascinating soft material, exhibiting complex mechanical responses and an array of unusual out-of-equilibrium behaviors. These include intermittent mechanical response, avalanche dynamics, slow relaxations, and a variety of mechanical memory effects. We use mechanical characterization, acoustic measurements, 3D scanning and tomography, advanced data analysis methods and extensive simulations to understand the origin of the rich mechanical behavior of these systems. Here is a video of a talk about some of these efforts given some time ago, a recent publication on memory formation, and a the latest on physical aging, avalanches and more.
Smart mechanical meta-matter
Mechanical metamaterials are designed complex systems made of structured media. Here, the macroscopic properties are determined by both the material properties and by the way in which this material is arranged in space. We study elastic, visco-elastic, active, and multistable metamaterials composed of distinct degrees of freedom, where the local mechanical rules are simple, but the macroscopic behaviors are complex due to disorder, nonlinearities, geometric frustration, symmetry breaking, or active control. Using smart designs, mechanical characterization, imaging, and modeling, we attempt to understand the relationship between complex macroscopic behaviors, material properties, and geometrical structure.
Biosensing and nanoscopy
We use smart illumination and advanced imaging methods to measure the dynamics and interactions between nanoparticles such as colloids, viruses, and biological macromolecules. Our focus is on label-free techniques that allow extracting information on the location of single nanoparticles, changes in their size, mass or composition, changes in their environment, and the nature of the interaction between them, at nano-scale resolution and high rates. More on one of these methods here (and here).
Correlated quantum walks
Quantum walks are the quantum-mechanical analogs of classical random walk processes. Using theoretical, numerical and machine learning tools, we explore the emergence of complex non-classical correlations between quantum walkers, ways of controlling them, and the use of such schemes in quantum information processing and computing. You can read more in our recent paper on using quantum walks for quantum logic operations, and another paper on deep learning quantum walks.
News
News:
January 2023: Yoav is Promoted to Associate Professor
December 2023: Dor and Yaniv's paper on aging via self-organized avalanches in crumpled media appears in Nature Physics!
September 2023: Yonatan Shevah joins the lab, to work on granular and amorphous matter.
January 2023: Dor's paper on dissipation as an indicator for memory formation in amorphous matter is out on PRL
January 2023: Miri's paper on deep learning of quantum walks is out on PRA
October 2022: The Israeli Science Foundation awarded us with a second, four-year grant to study memory, glassy dynamics, and critical phenomena in marginally stable disordered systems.
July 2022: Dor's paper on memory formation is out on PNAS, with a great accompanying commentary!
June 2022: Tomer Ur Soco, Gal Ambar and Ethan Swagel join the lab - welcome!
April 2022: New preprint on geometrically frustrated mechanical metamaterials https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.04000
October 2021: New preprint by Miri, on unsupervised learning of correlated quantum walks by generative models https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.06911
September 2021: New preprint by Dor, with Daniel Hexner on the mechanism of memory in crumpled sheets https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.05212
August 2021: The Israeli Science Foundation awarded us with a three-year grant to study quantum walks, together with Haim Suchowski, Moshe Goldstein, Hagai Eisenberg @huji, and Avi Zadok @biu
March 2021: Dor, Yaniv, and Tal to discuss their results on the APS March Meeting
December 2020: Matan Yah Ben Zion and Yonatan Aharoni join the lab - welcome!
November 2020: Lea's work on non-Newtonian mechanical metamaterials is featured in phys.org
September 2020: Dor won the Chateaubriand fellowship and will spend a semester of research at the Gulliver lab @ESPCI, Paris
July 2020: The Abramson Institute for Medical Physics awarded us with an equipment grant for the nanofluidic fiber microscope project
March 2020: New preprint by Lea, suggesting a feedback-based approach for creating dynamic, non-Newtonian mechanical metamaterials
March 2019: Our lab is officially open!
December 2018: The Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology awarded us a grant to study mechanical metamaterials in collaboration with Yair Shokef and Roni Ilan.
October 2018: The Israeli Science Foundation awarded us with a four-year grant to study the mechanisms underlying memory formation in non-equilibrium disordered matter, plus a generous new lab equipment grant.