University of Chicago Probability Seminar

Friday, Oct. 8, Fredrik Johansson Viklund, Columbia U.

Friday, Oct. 15, Midwest Probability Colloquium at Northwestern

Friday, Oct. 29, Tom Alberts, U. of Toronto, Convergence of Loop-Erased Random Walk to SLE(2) in the Natural Time Parameterization

I will discuss work in progress with Michael Kozdron and Robert Masson on the convergence of the two-dimensional loop-erased random walk process to SLE(2), with the time parameterization of the curves taken into account. This is a strengthening of the original Lawler, Schramm, and Werner result which was only for curves modulo a reparameterization. The ultimate goal is to show that the limiting curve is SLE(2) with the very specific natural time parameterization that was recently introduced in Lawler and Sheffield, and further studied in Lawler and Zhou. I will describe several possible choices for the parameterization of the discrete curve that should all give the natural time parameterization in the limit, but with the key difference being that some of these discrete time parameterizations are easier to analyze than the others.

Friday, Dec. 3, Pierre Nolin, Courant Institute Connection probabilities and RSW-type bounds for the two-dimensional FK Ising model

For two-dimensional independent percolation, Russo-Seymour-Welsh (RSW) bounds on crossing probabilities are an important a-priori indication of scale invariance, and they turned out to be a key tool to describe the phase transition: what happens at and near criticality. In this talk, we prove RSW-type uniform bounds on crossing probabilities for the FK Ising model at criticality, independent of the boundary conditions. A central tool in our proof is Smirnov's fermionic observable for the FK Ising model, that makes some harmonicity appear on the discrete level, providing precise estimates on boundary connection probabilities. We also prove several related results - including some new ones - among which the fact that there is no magnetization at criticality, tightness properties for the interfaces, and the value of the half-plane one-arm exponent. This is joint work with H. Duminil-Copin and C. Hongler.