Networks

Metastability in statistical mechanics and stochastic processes

Location: Eurandom, Eindhoven

Date: 18-22 April 2016

Organizers: Roberto Fernandez (Utrecht University), Francesca Nardi (TU Eind-
hoven) and Julien Sohier (University of Creteil).

Number of participants: 45

 

Description and scientic motivation

The goal of this workshop was to bring together leading experts in dierent approaches to the study of metastability together with an audience of interested colleagues andpotencial practitioners. We believe the workshop fostered a healthy exchange of ideas that could lead to new syntheses and collaborative eorts. Furthermore, it alowed these ideas to reach an enthusiastic community of PhD students and young researchers from The Netherlands and other European countries.
The workshop consisted of five daily sessions comprised of six or seven one-hour talks. Each session was centered around one or two particular aspects of the theory of metastability and included general pedagogical overviews by recognized experts.

 

More precisely:

  • On Monday 18th, E. Scoppola from University of Roma Tre and F. Nardi from TU Eindhoven introduced the pathwise approach to metastability.
  • On Tuesday 19th, F. den Hollander from University of Leiden gave an introductory talk about metastability on random graphs.
  • On Wednesday 20th, C. Landim from IMPA (Rio di Janeiro) introduced the martingale approach to metastability, and N. Berglund from University of Orleans introduced some metastability phenomenon related to PDE's.
  • On Thursday 21st, R. Kotecky described a continuum system of interacting particles and B. Shapira introduced the contact process evolving on general graphs.

Furthermore, the whole Tuesday session was devoted to topics related to the NET-
WORKS program, and more specically to the links between random graphs and the
metastability phenomenon.