Anton Bovier

Frank den Hollander

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 focuses on the precise analysis of the respective hitting probabilities and hitting times of these sets. The theory is illustrated with many examples, ranging from finite-state Markov chains, finite-dimensional diffusions and stochastic partial differential equations, via mean-field dynamics with and without disorder, to stochastic spin-flip and particle-hop dynamics and probabilistic cellular automata, unveiling the common universal features of these systems with respect to their metastable behaviour. The monograph will serve both as comprehensive introduction and as reference for graduate students and researchers interested in metastability.

A Potential-Theoretic Approach

Metastability

Fabio Martinelli

Marek Biskup

Dima Ioffe

Christina Toninelli

Karel Netocný

This volume presents a collection of courses introducing the reader to the recent progress with attention being paid to laying solid grounds and developing various basic tools. An introductory chapter on lattice spin models is useful as a background for other lectures of the collection. The topics include new results on phase transitions for gradient lattice models (with introduction to the techniques of the reflection positivity), stochastic geometry reformulation of classical and quantum Ising models, the localization/delocalization transition for directed polymers. A general rigorous framework for theory of metastability is presented and particular applications in the context of Glauber and Kawasaki dynamics of lattice models are discussed. A pedagogical account of several recently discussed topics in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics with an emphasis on general principles is followed by a discussion of kinetically constrained spin models that are reflecting important peculiar features of glassy dynamics.

Methods of Contemporary Mathematical Statistical Physics

Matthias Löwe

Irina Kurkova

Fluctuations of the Free Energy in the REM and the P-spin SK Models

Gérard Ben Arous

Jiři Černý

Universality of the REM for Dynamics of Mean Field Spin Glasses

Alessandra Faggionato

The REM-like Trap Model

Spectral Characterisation of Ageing

Erwin Bolthausen

This book serves as a concise introduction to the state-of-the-art of spin glass theory. The collection of review papers are written by leading experts in the field and cover the topic from a wide variety of angles. The book will be useful to both graduate students and young researchers, as well as to anyone curious to know what is going on in this exciting area of mathematical physics.

Spin Glasses

Pierre Picco

Mathematical Aspects of Spin Glasses and Neural Networks

Anne Boutet de Monvel

Over the last decade, spin glass theory has turned from a fascinating part of t- oretical physics to a ?ourishing and rapidly growing subject of probability theory as well. These developments have been triggered to a large part by the mathem- ical understanding gained on the fascinating and previously mysterious “Parisi solution” of the Sherrington–Kirkpatrick mean ?eld model of spin glasses, due to the work of Guerra, Talagrand, and others. At the same time, new aspects and applications of the methods developed there have come up. The presentvolumecollects a number of reviewsaswellas shorterarticlesby lecturers at a summer school on spin glasses that was held in July 2007 in Paris. These articles range from pedagogical introductions to state of the art papers, covering the latest developments. In their whole, they give a nice overview on the current state of the ?eld from the mathematical side. The review by Bovier and Kurkova gives a concise introduction to mean ?eld models, starting with the Curie–Weiss model and moving over the Random Energymodels up to the Parisisolutionof the Sherrington–Kirkpatrikmodel. Ben Arous and Kuptsov present a more recent view and disordered systems through the so-called local energy statistics. They emphasize that there are many ways to look at Hamiltonians of disordered systems that make appear the Random Energy model (or independent random variables) as a universal mechanism for describing certain rare events. An important tool in the analysis of spin glasses are correlation identities.

Summer School, Paris 2007

Spin Glasses: Statics and Dynamics

Anton Bovier

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