Math 299: Interacting Particle Systems & Stochastic Growth Models

This seminar meets Monday at 5:10-6:30 PM in MSB 3106, Small Seminar Room.

The general theory of interacting particles is described in the classic books by Tom Liggett: Interacting Particle Systems and Stochastic Interacting Systems: Contact, Voter and Exclusion Processs. Timo Seppäläinen's notes (a book in progress) on exclusion processes is also an excellent resource [pdf].

One aspect of the seminar will be on the application of methods from integrable systems, e.g. random matrix theory, Bethe Ansatz, Yang-Baxter equations, to models of interacting particle systems.

Fall 2009 Schedule:

October 5: Organizational meeting
October 12: Kurt Johansson's Corner Growth Model, Speaker: C. Tracy. Reference: Shape fluctuations and random matrices
October 19: No meeting. The Department's Fall Gathering is at 5:00 PM.
October 26 & November 2: Arctic Circle Theorems, Speaker: Dan Romik. Reference: Arctic circles, domino tilings and square Young tableaux
November 9: No meeting. (Faculty meeting at 5:10 PM.)
November 16: No meeting. (Away at Northeast Probability Seminar.)
November 23: Second lecture on Johansson's corner growth model.
At some point we will discuss the paper On ASEP with step Bernoulli initial condition

All students are invited to attend and to participate in the discussions. Students attending (but not giving lectures) can register for one or two units of credit.