Dilip Kondepudi

Professor

B.Sc. 1971, Madras University
M.Sc., 1973, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Ph.D., 1979, University of Texas at Austin (I. Prigogine)
Research Associate, 1980-1987, Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics, University of Texas at Austin
Visiting Scientist, summers of 1978, 1981, and 1984. The Solvay Institute, Brussels
Visiting Professor, summer of 1985, The Solvay Institute, Brussels
Reynolds Foundation Research Leave 1993

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Phone: (336) 758-5131

Research Details
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Description of Research
A general theory of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in chemical systems has been formulated. The fundamental equations of this theory depend only on the two-fold mirror-image symmetry and not on the details of the chemical kinetics. Close to equilibrium, the system will be in a symmetric state in which the amounts of the two enantiomers of all chiral molecules are equal. When the system is driven away from equilibrium by a flow of chemicals, a point is reached at which the system becomes unstable to small fluctuation in the difference in the amount of the two enantiomers. As a consequence, a small random fluctuation in the difference in the amount of the two enantiomers spontaneously grows and the system makes a transition to an asymmetric state. The general theory describes this phenomenon in the vicinity of the transition point. --READ MORE--