Workshop

MSRI's 2000-01 "Hot Topics" Workshop -- schedule now available NOTE: The first lecture of the workshop is the MSRI-Evans talk at 4:10 pm on Monday, April 30, in room 60 of Evans Hall on the Berkeley campus. Lectures will be in the Lawrence Hall of Science auditorium on Tuesday, May 1, and at MSRI on Wednesday through Friday. Phase transitions and critical phenomena have been intensively studied in physics. From a mathematical point of view, percolation is the simplest model exhibiting a phase transition: a minute modification of parameter can effect a qualitative macroscopic change in the system. It has been recently proven that critical two dimensional percolation satisfies conformal invariance in the scaling limit, for site percolation on the triangular lattice. As a consequence, it follows that a recently discovered continuous process called Stochastic Loewner Evolution (SLE) with parameter 6, describes the scaling limit of the boundary of the critical percolation clusters in this lattice. The SLE with other parameters is conjectured to describe the scaling limits of several other discrete models in two dimensions, including loop-erased random walk and uniform spanning trees. The goals of the workshop are to bring together researchers in probability, statistical physics, complex analysis and combinatorics, to describe recent results and methods, and promote future advances. Confirmed participants include: M. Aizenman (Princeton), V. Beffara (Orsay), I. Benjamini (Weizmann Institute), C. Borgs (Microsoft), J. Cardy (Oxford), J. Chayes (Microsoft), B. Duplantier (IHP), S. Fomin (Michigan), R. Kenyon (Orsay), H. Kesten (Cornell), G. Lawler (Duke), R. Lyons (Georgia Tech), N. Makarov (CalTech), C. M. Newman (NYU), B. Nienhuis (Amsterdam), Y. Peres (U.C. Berkeley), A. Pizstora (Carnegie Melon), S. Rohde (U. Washington), G. Schaeffer (LoriaNancy), O. Schramm (Microsoft), S. Smirnov (KTH), W. Werner (Orsay), D. B. Wilson (Microsoft) Plenty of time will be reserved for informal interaction among participants. Weather in Berkeley in May is usually very pleasant, and one afternoon will be left free, allowing participants to enjoy the area. Funded in part by the National Security Agency.    Group Photo of Participants