Statistical physics
This theme is historically one of the first research area of the laboratory, and it actually gathers activities being conducted in several groups. It is characterized by frequent and fruitful collaborations between theoreticians and experimentalists within the laboratory.
Statistical physics is devoted to the study of the collective and macroscopic behavior of systems composed of a large number of elementary entities that interact one with the other. One speaks of "complex system" when the dynamics, or the structures that appears within the system, exhibit a rich variety of behaviors, while the microscopic entities the system is made of, and the interactions between these entities, are a priori simple. It may be noticed that the sensitivity to the initial conditions, as well as the large number of possible evolutions, play a major role in the emergence of non-trivial collective behaviors in such systems.