The Gaussian Free Field, Conformal Field Theory, and Schramm-Loewner Evolution

Speaker: 

Tom Alberts

Institution: 

Cal Tech

Time: 

Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - 11:00am to 12:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

 I will review the recent mathematical approach to Conformal Field Theory proposed by my colleagues Nam-Gyu Kang and Nikolai Makarov. Their construction defines a certain class of algebraic operations on correlation functions of the Gaussian Free Field, and these operations can be used to give meaning to "vertex observables" and other well known objects in CFT. Using conformal transformation rules for the GFF these objects can be defined on any simply connected domain, and using Lie derivatives they can be analyzed when the domain evolves according to an infinitesimal flow. Using the flow of Loewner's differential equation produces a connection with the random curves of the Schramm-Loewner evolution, which I will describe along with some recent work in the case of multiple SLE curves.

Self-adjoint extensions, point potentials, and pinned polymers

Speaker: 

Mike Cranston

Institution: 

UCI

Time: 

Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - 11:00am to 12:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

 
In this talk we discuss closed self adjoint extensions of the Laplacian and fractional Laplacian on L2 of Euclidean space minus the origin. In some cases there is a one parameter family of these operators that behave like the original operator plus a potential at the origin. Using these operators, we can construct polymer measures which exhibit interesting phase transitions from an extended state to a bound state where the pinning at the origin due to the potential takes over. The talk is based on joint works with Koralov, Molchanov, Squartini and Vainberg.
 

On Self-Similarity and some Interacting Diffusions

Speaker: 

Leif Doring

Institution: 

ETH

Time: 

Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - 11:00am to 12:00pm

Host: 

Location: 

RH306

We recall some classical results on self-similar Markov processes and in particular explain how those relate to a very particular class of stochastic differential equations. Those SDEs have an infinite dimensional counter part which arise naturally in interacting diffusions and can be interpreted as generalized voter process.

On limiting operators related to circular ensembles.

Speaker: 

Joseph Najnudel

Institution: 

Univ. Paul Sabatier, Toulouse

Time: 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - 11:00am to 12:00pm

It is a classical result, by Dyson, that the behavior of the eigenvalues of a random unitary matrix following uniform measure tend, when the dimension goes to infinity, after a suitable scaling, to a random set of points, called adeterminantal sine-kernel process. By defining the model in all dimensions on a single probability space, we are able to show that the convergence stated above can occur almost surely. Moreover, in an article with K. Maples and A. Nikeghbali, we interpret the limiting point process as the spectrum of a random operator.

Metastable Densities for Contact Processes on Random Graphs

Speaker: 

Daniel Valesin

Institution: 

University of British Columbia

Time: 

Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Host: 

Location: 

RH 340P

We consider the contact process on a random graph chosen with a fixed degree, power law distribution, according to a model proposed by Newman, Strogatz and Watts (2001). We follow the work of Chatterjee and Durrett (2009) who showed that for arbitrarily small infection parameter λ

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