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Nonequilibrium Theory Lab (Ikeda Group)
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A lab that uses theory to explore materials such as glass, foam, and sand piles, which can be called neither solid nor liquid.
AboutAbout the lab
Is mayonnaise a solid or a liquid?
The Ikeda Group studies the physics of soft matter and nonequilibrium materials.
Many materials around us, like mayonnaise, behave like a liquid when squeezed out of the bottle but hold their shape on a plate.
The lab aims to understand this coexistence of solid-like and liquid-like behavior in materials such as glass, lathered shampoo, sand piles, and gels.
The lab conducts its research through theoretical analysis based on statistical mechanics and continuum mechanics, together with numerical simulations.
Key terms
- Soft matter
- A collective term for soft materials that easily change shape, such as foams, gels, and emulsions
- Statistical mechanics
- A field of physics that treats the motion of many particles collectively to derive the properties of a material as a whole
- Jamming transition
- A phenomenon in which a collection of droplets or grains becomes tightly packed and solidifies while remaining disordered
- Viscoelasticity
- The property of having both the tendency to return to the original shape like a spring and the tendency to flow slowly like a liquid
NewsLab news
A doctoral student received a poster award at the international conference Workshop: Driven and active amorphous matter
A doctoral student received a poster award at the international conference StatPhys29
Discovery of a hidden connection between mayonnaise and glass (press release)
A master's student received the Department of Multidisciplinary Sciences Encouragement Award
ResearchResearch themes
The materials studied fall into four broad categories: glasses, emulsions and foams, granular materials, and gels. All of them have disordered structures and share the feature that solid-like and liquid-like behavior coexist, and the lab studies these materials across all four categories.
*Illustrative imageGlasses
When a liquid is cooled rapidly or compressed, it solidifies into a glass while its structure remains disordered. The lab has worked on discovering the spatially localized low-energy excitations unique to glasses and on clarifying their origin.
*Illustrative imageEmulsions and Foams
The lab studies the jamming transition, in which a dense, disordered collection of droplets or bubbles, such as mayonnaise, becomes rigid. It has established that this is a transition distinct from the glass transition, and also works on fluidization and viscoelasticity.
*Illustrative imageGranular Materials
This area deals with collections of grains of visible size, such as a sand pile. Focusing on the role of dissipation, such as friction between grains, the lab is investigating the similarities and differences between glasses and granular materials.
*Illustrative imageGels
A gel is a material in which particles attract each other and form a network of "bonds." The lab found that, unlike glasses, physical gels do not have localized low-energy excitations. It is also about to begin research on chemical gels.
MembersFaculty
The Ikeda Group consists of faculty members, doctoral students, and master's students.As of 2025
- Associate ProfessorAtsushi IkedaPublications ↗
- Assistant Professor水野 英如
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Mayonnaise (1)” jules / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Glasses: “Crystalline and amorphous” Maxmath12 / CC0 (cropped)
- Emulsions and Foams: “Bubbles in a Foam” KarlGaff / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Granular Materials: “Granular force chain” DMGualtieri / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Gels: “Superabsorber Hydrogel KSG 2917 pK” Petra Klawikowski / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Yokogawa Lab): “Separatory funnel with oil and colored water” PRHaney / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Yanagisawa Lab): “Phosphatidylcholine liposomes stained with acridine orange” ArkhipovSergey / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Ishihara Lab): “Actin Filaments in a Neuroblastoma cell Line” Howard Vindin / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Wakamoto Lab): “E. coli Bacteria ( )” NIAID / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
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