Saint Petersburg School in Probability and Statistical Physics

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This grant will support early career mathematicians from the US to attend St. Petersburg School in Probability and Statistical Physics, to take place in June 2012 at the Chebyshev Laboratory at St. Petersburg State University, Russia. This event is devoted to the most recent advances in the area of spatial probability and to classical areas with current increase of activity. The topics of the school are of a very general interest and concern random walks in random environments, random growth models and random graphs, Gaussian free fields and other spatial random processes as well as random matrices, concentration of measure and Markov chains. With the impressive program of lecture courses and invited talks given by the world-leading experts and more than 120 carefully selected participants, this School will be one of major events in the field of spatial probability in 2012. Spatial probability is a wide area on the border of modern probability theory and statistical physics that studies certain types of spatial random processes and in particular, the dynamics of complex stochastic systems. The questions that draw a lot of permanent attention include description of phase transitions of such systems, their behavior at criticality, and universality of this behavior. The progress of the last decade shows deep connections between many fundamental models in this field, for example percolation and Ising model, and the other branches of mathematics and physics.