Transport in complex driven systems

In this thesis we study collective effects in many-particle systems driven by some external force. The driving force results in large scale transport, while crowding due to frustration of the constituent particles leads to dynamic slow-down and arrest. It is this competition between driving force and crowding in the transport properties that we study for a few systems in this thesis. The driven systems under study, however, are of very different nature; we study traffic on highways, sheared colloidal glasses and molecular motors moving along the cytokeleton. The transport properties of complex driven systems is not yet understood at this point, and new methods and techniques are needed. We contribute to the understanding of driven systems by connecting fundamental interactions between particles in the different systems and developing techniques to analyze the transport properties.