Branching Brownian motion (BBM) is a classical object in probability theory with deep connections to partial differential equations. This book highlights the connection to classical extreme value theory and to the theory of mean-field spin glasses in statistical mechanics. Starting with a concise review of classical extreme value statistics and a basic introduction to mean-field spin glasses, the author then focuses on branching Brownian motion. Here, the classical results of Bramson on th...

The proceedings of the 2005 les Houches summer school on Mathematical Statistical Physics give and broad and clear overview on this fast developing area of interest to both physicists and mathematicians. - Introduction to a field of math with many interdisciplinary connections in physics, biology, and computer science - Roadmap to the next decade of mathematical statistical mechanics - Volume for reference years to come

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,...

This monograph provides a concise presentation of a mathematical approach to metastability, a wide-spread phenomenon in the dynamics of non-linear systems - physical, chemical, biological or economic - subject to the action of temporal random forces typically referred to as noise, based on potential theory of reversible Markov processes.The authors shed new light on the metastability phenomenon as a sequence of visits of the path of the process to different metastable sets, and foc...

This text presents the two complementary aspects of thermal physics as an integrated theory of the properties of matter. Conceptual understanding is promoted by thorough development of basic concepts. In contrast to many texts, statistical mechanics, including discussion of the required probability theory, is presented first. This provides a statistical foundation for the concept of entropy, which is central to thermal physics. A unique feature of the book is the development of entropy bas...

Most interesting and difficult problems in equilibrium statistical mechanics concern models which exhibit phase transitions. For graduate students and more experienced researchers this book provides an invaluable reference source of approximate and exact solutions for a comprehensive range of such models.Part I contains background material on classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, together with a classification and survey of lattice models. The geometry of phase transit...

This book presents various results and techniques from the theory of stochastic processes that are useful in the study of stochastic problems in the natural sciences. The main focus is analytical methods, although numerical methods and statistical inference methodologies for studying diffusion processes are also presented. The goal is the development of techniques that are applicable to a wide variety of stochastic models that appear in physics, chemistry and other natural sciences. Applic...

In these lecture notes, we will analyze the behavior of random walk on disordered media by means of both probabilistic and analytic methods, and will study the scaling limits. We will focus on the discrete potential theory and how the theory is effectively used in the analysis of disordered media. The first few chapters of the notes can be used as an introduction to discrete potential theory.Recently, there has been significant progress on the theory of random walk on disordered med...

The area of coalgebra has emerged within theoretical computer science with a unifying claim: to be the mathematics of computational dynamics. It combines ideas from the theory of dynamical systems and from the theory of state-based computation. Although still in its infancy, it is an active area of research that generates wide interest. Written by one of the founders of the field, this book acts as the first mature and accessible introduction to coalgebra. It provides clear mathematical ex...

This book focuses on the major applications of martingales to the geometry of Banach spaces, and a substantial discussion of harmonic analysis in Banach space valued Hardy spaces is also presented. It covers exciting links between super-reflexivity and some metric spaces related to computer science, as well as an outline of the recently developed theory of non-commutative martingales, which has natural connections with quantum physics and quantum information theory. Requiring few prerequis...

"Stochastic Tools in Mathematics and Science" covers basic stochastic tools used in physics, chemistry, engineering and the life sciences. The topics covered include conditional expectations, stochastic processes, Brownian motion and its relation to partial differential equations, Langevin equations, the Liouville and Fokker-Planck equations, as well as Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, renormalization, basic statistical mechanics, and generalized Langevin equations and the Mori-Zwanzig...

Focusing on p-adic and adelic analogues of pseudodifferential equations, this monograph presents a very general theory of parabolic-type equations and their Markov processes motivated by their connection with models of complex hierarchic systems. The Gelfand-Shilov method for constructing fundamental solutions using local zeta functions is developed in a p-adic setting and several particular equations are studied, such as the p-adic analogues of the Klein-Gordon equation. Pseudodifferentia...