Abstract

Glasses are out of equilibrium, even if they are in good contact with an equilibrated thermal bath, because they are systems that gets lost in a complex, labyrinthine landscape. Systems of individuals undergoing Darwinian evolution share with glasses the complexity of the (fitness) landscape, but have the additional complication that their dynamics has a priori nothing to do with thermal evolution. And yet, a notion of temperature and thermalization can emerge in both cases, as a paradoxical consequence of the slowness of relaxation. For glasses this has been known for some time, while for Darwinian systems the fact is much less explored and offers the possibility of understanding population histories as experimental glass protocols.

The Colloquium Ehrenfestii takes place on Wednesday evenings starting at 19:30 hours in the main auditorium of the Oort building. Before the Colloquium, there is a common dinner in the canteen located on the ground floor of the Oort building. This dinner starts at 18:00 hours sharp and is FREE of charge, under the condition that one attends the colloquium and that one has made a reservation before noon on the Tuesday preceding the colloquium.

The registration form is only accessible from within the University (to block spammers); if you would like to register for the dinner from outside the University, please send an email to fran@lorentz.leidenuniv.nl   The revolving doors to the Oort building  are accessible until 9 pm after that they are locked and one should instead use the sliding doors directly adjacent to the Huygens building: these can be opened with an electronic key (seek help from locals).