This new volume provides the necessary background material and brings into focus the fundamental concepts essential for advanced research in theoretical condensed matter physics and its interface with molecular biophysics. It is the outcome of the author’s long teaching and research career in theoretical condensed matter physics and related interdisciplinary fields. The author aims to motivate students to take up research in condensed matter physics and march toward new frontiers. He writes: “My long understanding of students’ attitude and orientation brings me to the conclusion that many of them are quite excited about the developments in the frontier research areas at the beginning of their career; however, a sizeable fraction of them start losing interest gradually as they are often unable to connect these developments with the basic physics they have studied. I have tried to fill this gap in this book.” To this end, special care has been taken to balance the physical concepts and mathematical expressions as well as proper mixing of theoretical and experimental aspects. He starts with the very well-known elementary ideas or basic concepts and goes forward so as to remove the apparent conceptual and technical gap between the known laws and various interesting, challenging, and novel experimental results and effects, some of which are amongst the latest discoveries. Key features: • Introduces a new way of looking at various important and fundamental phenomena in condensed matter from the perspective of microscopic theory • Explores a new interface of quantum condensed matter physics and molecular biophysics, highlighting research potentialities • Addresses the crucial questions surrounding these phenomena when they are mutually coexisting or competing in real condensed matter systems or materials, from both theoretical and experimental angles • Deals with biological molecules and some of their properties and processes and discusses the modeling of these with the help of condensed matter physics and statistical physics • Emphasizes fundamental concepts, particularly in condensed matter physics and making proper use of them

Soft condensed matter physics, which emerged as a distinct branch of physics in the 1990s, studies complex fluids: liquids in which structures with length scale between the molecular and the macroscopic exist. Polymers, liquid crystals, surfactant solutions, and colloids fall into this category. Physicists deal with properties of soft matter system

The book reviews the current experimental and theoretical knowledge of the synergism between modern physics, soft condensed matter and biology, presenting a thorough discussion of the relative role of the various fundamental interactions in such systems: electrostatic, hydrophobic, steric, conformational, van der Waals, etc. These competing interactions influence the form and topology of soft and biological matter, like polymers and proteins, leading to hierarchical structures in self-assembling systems and folding patterns sometimes described in terms of chirality, braids and knots. Finally, the competing interactions influence various bioprocesses like genetic regulation and biological evolution taking place in systems like biopolymers, macromolecules and cell membranes. The authors include theoretical physicists, soft condensed matter experimentalists, biological physicists, and molecular biologists - all leaders in their respective fields. Aside from the need to gain new, fundamental insights, the subject area is also of great importance for many applications, in that self-assembly and hierarchical assembly are important features to achieve functionality on multiple length scales. Applications range from the nanoscopic (e.g., biomolecular material and copolymeric mesophases) to the microscopic (all organic microelectronics) to the macroscopic (high-performance structural composites).

Soft condensed matter physics, which emerged as a distinct branch of physics in the 1990s, studies complex fluids: liquids in which structures with length scale between the molecular and the macroscopic exist. Polymers, liquid crystals, surfactant solutions, and colloids fall into this category. Physicists deal with properties of soft matter systems that are generic and largely independent of chemical details. They are especially fascinated by the way soft matter systems can harness Brownian motion to self-assemble into higher-order structures. Exploring the generic properties of soft matter offers insights into many fundamental questions that cut across a number of disciplines. Although many of these apply to materials and industrial applications, the focus of this volume is on their applications in molecular and cell biology based on the realization that biology is soft matter come alive. The chapters in Soft Condensed Matter Physics in Molecular and Cell Biology originated as lectures in the NATO Advanced Science Institute (ASI) and Scottish Universities Summer Schools in Physics with the same name; they represent the thinking of seventeen experts operating at the cutting edge of their respective fields. The book provides a thorough grounding in the fundamental physics of soft matter and then explores its application with regard to the three important classes of biomacromolecules: proteins, DNA, and lipids, as well as to aspects of the biology of cells. The final section of the book considers experimental techniques, covering single molecule force spectroscopy of proteins, the use of optical tweezers, along with X-ray, neutron, and light scattering from solutions. While this work presents fundamentals that make it a suitable text for graduate students in physics, it also offers valuable insights for established soft condensed matter physicists seeking to contribute to biology, and for biologists wanting to understand what the latest think

Comprehensive and accessible coverage from the basics to advanced topics in modern quantum condensed matter physics.