Dr. Jason R. Green, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics
University of Massachusetts Boston
Gaseous mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen can explode, creating harsh and dynamic conditions where molecules transform into a variety of ephemeral species en route to the product, water. These transformations are subject to basic rules, the “chemical mechanism”, which are encoded on the patterns and statistical structure of the chemical species evolved. The need to learn these mechanisms from the experimental data available raises theoretical questions about the application of information theory and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. I will discuss our recent work in this direction and show how reformulating these mathematical tools gives a new perspective on the ability to learn the chemistry behind explosions. Gaseous mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen can explode, creating harsh and dynamic conditions where molecules transform into a variety of ephemeral species en route to the product, water. These transformations are subject to basic rules, the “chemical mechanism”, which are encoded on the patterns and statistical structure of the chemical species evolved. The need to learn these mechanisms from the experimental data available raises theoretical questions about the application of information theory and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. I will discuss our recent work in this direction and show how reformulating these mathematical tools gives a new perspective on the ability to learn the chemistry behind explosions.
