Dynamics, aging and universality in complex systems

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports the conference "Dynamics, Aging and Universality in Complex Systems" that will be held from the 19th-23rd of June, 2017, at the Courant Institute (NYU) in New York City. The conference has 30 confirmed speakers in very active and fundamental areas at the intersection of probability, analysis, and mathematical physics. The main aim in the rigorous study of complex disordered systems is to understand how random microscopic systems display predictable and statistically universal collective macroscopic behaviors. Many such systems evolve to stationary states, but do so in very long time scales (e.g., exponential in system size). Dynamics and aging in these complex systems seeks to understand how their complicated energy landscapes governs their pre-stationary behavior. There are many different approaches in this area that will be represented at the conference, including spin-glasses, stochastic partial differential equations (PDEs), large deviation theory, and random matrix theory. This gathering will lead to cross-fertilization between these areas as well as inspire and inform a new generation of researchers. This event will attract a large and diverse spectrum of participants, including many earlier career researchers, women and under-represented minorities. Many of the complex systems which will be discussed in this conference aim to describe real world phenomena and results proved for the mathematical models provide predictions applicable to the real systems. At a simpler level, think, for instance, of how the central limit theorem for sums of independent random variables predicts the Gaussian statistics which drives a large part of statistics in the real world. Besides physical applications, complex systems (e.g., spin glasses, growth processes and random matrices) have found many applications in computer science, machine learning, data science, bioinformatics, chemistry, and even areas like ecology and earth science. The website for this conference is: http://cims.nyu.edu/conferences/gba60/