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“Rare Behavior in Models of Random Geometry”

Special Seminar

Come join us Wednesday February 7, 2018 at 12 pm in RM 507, Professor Shirshendu Ganguly (Berkeley) will be giving a special lecture about “Rare Behavior in Models of Random Geometry”.

Abstract

Models of random geometry have long been investigated in contexts such as real life networks, fluid flow in porous media, and interface dynamics in statistical physics. To develop a refined understanding of such models, one often needs to study not only typical fluctuation theory but also the realm of atypical events. In this talk we describe such a program for two classical models of random geometry: percolation on the complete graph and random distortions of the Euclidean lattice. In particular, we will consider the rare events that a sparse random network has an atypical number of some local structure and that a geodesic in a random metric space has atypical length; both of the corresponding random variables being non-linear functions of the underlying randomness. The geometry associated to typical instances of these rare events is an important topic of inquiry: it can involve merely local objects, or more global ones. We will discuss recent resolutions of certain long standing questions concerning such phenomena, and connections to other areas of mathematics including random matrix theory, information theory, and algebraic and extremal combinatorics.

Mathematics Hall, Room 507

Wednesday February 7, 2018 at 12 pm

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