Large deviations from equilibrium measure for zeros of random holomorphic fields.

Speaker: 

Professor Steve Zelditch

Institution: 

Johns Hopkins

Time: 

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 - 2:00pm

Location: 

RH 306

An old result of Kac-Hammersley says that the complex zeros of a Gaussian
random polynomial \sum_{j = 0}^N a_j z^j with i.i.d. normal coefficients a_j, concentrate
on the unit circle. This seems counter intuitive at first, since the zeros could be anywhere.
We will explain this paradox and show that there is a very general result that empirical measures
of complex zeros tend to `equilibrium measures'. We then give a large deviations principle showing
that the probability of deviation from equilibrium measure is exponentially small.

Perturbed simple random walk

Speaker: 

Professor Ben Morris

Institution: 

UC Davis

Time: 

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - 11:00am

Location: 

RH 306

A random walk is called recurrent if it is sure to return to its starting point and transient otherwise. A famous result of Polya is that simple symmetric random walk on the integer lattice is recurrent in dimensions 1 and 2, and transient in higher dimensions. We study random walks that are small perturbations of simple random walk. Our main result is that if the dimension is high enough then these random walks are transient.

Polymer Depinning Transitions with Loop Exponent One

Speaker: 

Professor Ken Alexander

Institution: 

USC

Time: 

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - 11:00am

Location: 

RH 306

We consider a polymer with configuration modeled by the trajectory of a Markov chain, interacting with a potential of form u+V_n when it visits a particular state 0 at time n, with V_n representing i.i.d. quenched disorder. There is a critical value of u above which the polymer is pinned by the potential. Typically the probability of an excursion of length n for the underlying Markov chain is taken to decay as a power of n (called the loop exponent), perhaps with a slowly varying correction. A particular case not covered in a number of previous studies is that of loop exponent one, which includes simple random walk in two dimensions. We show that in this case, at all temperatures, the critical values of u in the quenched and annealed models are equal, in contrast to all other loop exponents, for which these critical values are known to differ at least at low temperatures. The work is joint with N. Zygouras.

"Continuum limits for beta ensembles"

Speaker: 

Professor Brian Rider

Institution: 

University of Colorado

Time: 

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 11:00am

Location: 

RH 306

The beta ensembles of random matrix theory are natural generalizations of the Gaussian Orthogonal, Unitary, and Symplectic Ensembles, these classical cases corresponding to beta = 1, 2, and 4. We prove that the extremal eigenvalues for the general ensembles have limit laws described by the low lying spectrum of certain raandom Schroedinger operators, as conjectured by Edelman-Sutton. As a corollary, a second characterization of these laws is made the explosion probability of a simple one-dimensional diffusion. A complementary pictures is developed for beta versions of random sample-covariance matrices. (Based on work with J. Ramirez and B. Virag.)

On the spectrum of large random reversible stochastic matrice

Speaker: 

Professor Pietro Caputo

Institution: 

Universit Roma Tre

Time: 

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - 11:00am

Location: 

RH 306

We consider random matrices associated to random walks on the complete
graph with random weights. When the weights have finite second moment we
find Wigner-like behavior for the empirical spectral density. If the
weights have finite fourth moment we prove convergence of extremal
eigenvalues to the edge of the semi-circle law. The case of weights with
infinite second moment is also considered. In this case we prove
convergence of the spectral density on a suitable scale and the limiting
measure is characterized in terms certain Poisson weighted infinite
trees associated to the starting graph. Connections with recent work on
random matrices with i.i.d. heavy-tailed entries and several open
problems are also discussed. This is recent work in collaboration with
D. Chafai and C. Bordenave (from Univ. P.Sabatier, Toulouse - France).

Heat kernel estimates for Dirichlet fractional Laplacian

Speaker: 

Professor Panki Kim

Institution: 

Seoul National University

Time: 

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 11:00am

Location: 

RH 306

In this talk, we discuss the sharp two-sided estimates for the heat kernel of Dirichlet fractional Laplacian in open sets. This heat kernel is also the transition density of a rotationally symmetric -stable process killed upon leaving an open set. Our results are the first sharp two-sided estimates for the Dirichlet heat kernel of a non-local operator on open sets. This is a joint work with Zhen-Qing Chen and Renming Song.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Combinatorics and Probability