04/02/2019, 15:30 — 17:00 — Room P4.35, Mathematics Building
Joe Chen, Colgate University
Hydrodynamic limit of particle systems on resistance spaces (V)
A main topic in probability theory is the study of scaling limits of random processes. One class of problems deals with scaling limits of single-particle Markov processes to a diffusion process. Another class of problems deals with scaling limits of many-particle Markov processes to a deterministic or stochastic differential equation. The former class has been studied on many state spaces, such as Euclidean spaces, manifolds, graphs, groups, etc. The latter class has been studied on Euclidean spaces, but not as much on non-Euclidean spaces.
The goal of my mini-course is to describe my recent progress on establishing scaling limits of many-particle systems on state spaces which are bounded in the resistance metric, a.k.a. resistance spaces. These include trees, fractals, and random graphs arising from critical percolation. As a concrete example, we can establish scaling limits of the weakly asymmetric exclusion process on the Sierpinski gasket interacting with 3 boundary reservoirs, which generalizes (in a nontrivial way) the analysis on the unit interval interacting with 2 boundary reservoirs. I will explain the key ideas behind these results, and discuss connections to the analysis of (S)PDEs, and issues of non-equilibrium statistical physics, on resistance spaces. From a technical point of view, I will address some novel functional inequalities for the exclusion process that relates to electrical resistance, and describe how they are used to effect coarse-graining in passing to the scaling limits.
