Interacting Stochastic Particle Systems

May 18 - 23, 2009
Organizers: K. Khanin (Toronto), J. Lebowitz (Rutgers), J. Quastel (Toronto), T. Seppalainen
(to be coordinated with two workshops organized by PIMS)

Statistical mechanics provides the formalism of Gibbsian ensembles for computing properties of equilibrium systems from a knowledge of the microscopic interactions between the constituent particles. Our understanding of nonequilibrium situations is less satisfactory. In the field of interacting stochastic particle systems nonequilibrium questions are studied in simplified models that are amenable to mathematically rigorous analysis. This workshop brings together researchers from interacting stochastic systems and related areas to survey recent successes and to map out promising future directions.

Among these are the universality classes of fluctuations in one-dimensional driven interacting systems. In addition to exact limit distributions found in special models, the correct order of fluctuations has been identified for a general class of asymmetric exclusion processes. Another area of recent progress is the large deviation behavior of nonequilibrium stationary states in systems in contact with a reservoir. Interesting new constructions have been presented, such as multilayer systems that represent the stationary distributions of systems with several species of particles, and direct connections between queueing models, random walks and combinatorial methods have been developed.

INVITED PARTICIPANTS

Ken Alexander (University of Southern California)
Märton Baläzs (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)
Cedric Bernardin (ENS Lyon)
Lorenzo Bertini (Universita` degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza")
Thierry Bodineau (Université Paris 7)
Eric Cator (Delft University of Technology)
Francis Comets (Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot)
Bernard Derrida (École Normale Superieure)
Pablo Ferrari (Universidade de Sao Paulo)
Patrik Ferrari (WIAS-Berlin)
Alessandro Giuliani (Universita' di Roma Tre)
Ilie Grigorescu (University of Miami)
Piet Groeneboom (Technische Universiteit te Delft)
Dmitry Ioffe (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)
Giovanni Jona-Lasinio (Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza)
Min Kang (North Carolina State University)
Tobias Kuna (Universität Bielefeld)
Claudio Landim (IMPA)
James Martin (Oxford University)
Tom Mountford (EPFL-Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
Neil O’Connell (University of Warwick)
Stefano Olla (Université de Paris - Dauphine)
Leandro Pimentel (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
Michael Prähofer (Zentrum Mathematik)
Errico Presutti (Universita` degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata")
Fraydoun Rezakhanlou (University of California,Berkeley)
Sunder Sethuraman (Iowa State University)
Vladas Sidoravicius (IMPA)
Eugene Speer (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
Bälint Töth (Technical University Budapest)
Benedek Valkö (University of Toronto at Scarborough)
Maria Eulalia Vares (CBPF)