Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 60: Critical Phenomena and Phase Transitions

DY 60.8: Talk

Friday, March 13, 2026, 11:30–11:45, ZEU/0114

Self-Assembly as a Topological Entropic Transition: Geometry, Connectivity and the Emergence of Molecular Order — •Vicente Domínguez Arca — Biosystem and Bioprocesses Engineering, IIM-CSIC, Spain — Physical and Biophysical Chemistry, Bielefeld University, Germany

Self-assembly in soft-matter systems is traditionally explained through intermolecular forces acting at short metric ranges. Here we propose a radically different view: aggregation emerges from a topological-entropic transition in the geometry of accessible microstates. Using a connectivity-based model of amphiphilic micellization, we show that aggregation reduces the degeneracy of solvent configurations, collapsing a manifold of equivalent states into a confined thermodynamic paraboloid.

This reorganization generates effective forces without invoking pairwise attractions, as entropic gradients arise from the curvature of the configuration manifold itself. The hydrophobic effect thus appears not as a fundamental interaction, but as a solvent-mediated constraint that selects ordered states by maximizing accessible degrees of freedom. This framework explains micellization as a connectivity threshold and rationalizes enthalpy-entropy compensation as a geometric projection of the same curvature tensor. Self-assembly therefore emerges as a topological transition driven by entropy, revealing order as a consequence of state-space geometry rather than microscopic forces.

Keywords: Topological Self-Assembly; Entropic Forces; Configuration Manifold Geometry; Connectivity-Driven Transitions; Micellization Thermodynamics