Lecture Notes in Mathematics

3 primary works

Methods of Contemporary Mathematical Statistical Physics

by Marek Biskup, Anton Bovier, Frank den Hollander, Dima Ioffe, Fabio Martinelli, Karel Netocny, and Christina Toninelli

Published 1 January 2009

The Lecture Notes collect seven mini-courses presented at the 5th Prague Summer School on Mathematical Statistical Physics that took placeduringtwoweeksofSeptember2006.Aswithprecedingschools,it was aimed at PhD students and young postdocs. The central theme of the volume is what could be called "mathematics of phase transitions" in diverse contexts. Even though all courses were meant to introduce the reader to recent progress of a particular topic of modern statis- cal physics, attention has been paid to providing a solid grounding by carefully developing various basic tools. One of the techniques that led, more than two decades ago, to a seriesofimportantoutcomesinthetheoryofphasetransitionsoflattice models was re?ection positivity. Recently it resurfaced and was used to obtain interesting new results in various settings. The lectures of Marek Biskup include a thorough introduction to re?ection positivity as well as a review of its recent applications. In addition, it contains a crash course on lattice spin models that is useful as a background for other lectures of the collection. Also the following two contributions concern equilibrium statistical physics.ThelecturesofDmitriIo?earedevotedtoastochasticgeom- ricreformulationofclassicalaswellasquantumIsingmodels.
Auni?ed approachtotheFortuin-Kasteleynandrandomcurrentrepresentations in terms of path integrals is presented. Statistical mechanics of directed polymers interacting with o- dimensionalspatiale?ectsisatopicwithvariousapplicationsinphysics and biophysics. The lectures of Fabio Toninelli are devoted to a th- ough discussion of the localization/delocalization transition in these models.

Random Polymers

by Frank den Hollander

Published 12 May 2009

Polymer chains that interact with themselves and/or with their environment are fascinating objects, displaying a range of interesting physical and chemical phenomena. The focus in this monograph is on the mathematical description of some of these phenomena, with particular emphasis on phase transitions as a function of interaction parameters, associated critical behavior and space-time scaling. Topics include: self-repellent polymers, self-attracting polymers, polymers interacting with interfaces, charged polymers, copolymers near linear or random selective interfaces, polymers interacting with random substrate and directed polymers in random environment. Different techniques are exposed, including the method of local times, large deviations, the lace expansion, generating functions, the method of excursions, ergodic theory, partial annealing estimates, coarse-graining techniques and martingales. Thus, this monograph offers a mathematical panorama of polymer chains, which even today holds plenty of challenges.

Random Walks, Random Fields, and Disordered Systems

by Anton Bovier, David Brydges, Amin Coja-Oghlan, Dmitry Ioffe, and Gregory F. Lawler

Published 29 September 2015

Focusing on the mathematics that lies at the intersection of probability theory, statistical physics, combinatorics and computer science, this volume collects together lecture notes on recent developments in the area. The common ground of these subjects is perhaps best described by the three terms in the title: Random Walks, Random Fields and Disordered Systems. The specific topics covered include a study of Branching Brownian Motion from the perspective of disordered (spin-glass) systems, a detailed analysis of weakly self-avoiding random walks in four spatial dimensions via methods of field theory and the renormalization group, a study of phase transitions in disordered discrete structures using a rigorous version of the cavity method, a survey of recent work on interacting polymers in the ballisticity regime and, finally, a treatise on two-dimensional loop-soup models and their connection to conformally invariant systems and the Gaussian Free Field. The notes are aimed at early graduate students with a modest background in probability and mathematical physics, although they could also be enjoyed by seasoned researchers interested in learning about recent advances in the above fields.