DIMACS Workshop Statistical Physics Methods in Discrete Probability, Combinatorics and Theoretical Computer Science
Statistical Physics Methods in Discrete Probability,
Combinatorics and Theoretical Computer Science
Workshop schedule:
Sunday, March 23, 1997 (IAS)
8:00 (sharp) Bus pick-up
Breakfast
9:30-9:55 Opening
10:05-10:55 Bela Bollabas
Cambridge University and the University of Memphis
The phase transition in random graphs.
11:00-11:25 Break
11:25-11:50 Boris Pittel, Ohio State University
Sudden emergence of a giant k-core in a randomly evolving graph.
(work with Joel Spencer and Nicholas Wormald)
12:00-12:25 Christian Borgs, Institute for Advanced Study and Microsoft
Birth of the infinite cluster: A new look at percolation.
(work with Jennifer Chayes, Harry Kesten and Joel Spencer)
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:50 Scott Kirkpatrick, IBM
Satisfiability and phase transitions.
3:00-3:25 Ehud Friedgut, Hebrew University
Sharp thresholds for graph properties and the k-sat problem.
3:30-4:00 Tea
4:05-4:30 Bernard Derrida, Ecole Normale Superieur, Paris
Non-trivial exponents in the dynamics of the 1d Potts model.
5:00-6:00 Diane Hernek, UCLA
Review Session: Computer science
6:15-7:00 Reception
7:00 Dinner
Monday, March 24, 1997 (IAS)
8:00 (sharp) Bus pick-up
Breakfast
9:30-10:20 Alistair Sinclair, University of California at Berkeley and ICSI
Convergence rates for Monte Carlo experiments.
10:30-10:55 Mark Jerrum, University of Edinburgh
The Swendsen-Wang process does not always mix rapidly.
(work with Vivek Gore)
11:00-11:25 Break
11:25-11:50 Alan Frieze, Carnegie Mellon University
Log-Sobolev inequalities and sampling from log-concave
distributions. (work with Ravi Kannan)
12:00-12:25 David Aldous, University of California at Berkeley
A Metropolis-type optimizatoin algorithm on the infinite tree.
12:30-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:25 Nati Linial, Hebrew University
Covering maps among graphs, random lifts and their applications.
2:35-3:35 Problem Session
3:40-4:15 Tea
4:15-5:15 Problem Session
5:30-6:30 Jacob van den Berg, CWI
Review Session: Phase transitions
7:00 Dinner
Tuesday, March 25, 1997 (DIMACS)
8:00,8:30 Van pick-up
Breakfast
9:00-9:25 David Reimer, Institute for Advanced Study
Probabilites on disjoint sets: A proof of the
van den Berg-Kesten conjecture.
9:35-10:00 Robert Langlands, Institute for Advanced Study
Numerical experiments for the Ising model.
10:05-10:30 Break
10:30-11:20 Michael Aizenman, Princeton University
Critical percolation.
11:30-11:55 Gordon Slade, McMaster University
Lattice trees, percolation and super-Brownian motion.
12:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:25 Yuval Peres, Hebrew University
The Ising model on general trees: an introduction.
2:35-3:00 Robin Pemantle, University of Wisconsin
Recursions on trees related to particle systems.
(work with Yuval Peres)
3:00-3:40 Tea
3:40-4:30 Leonard Schulman, Georgia Insitute of Technology
Computation in the presense of noise.
4:40-5:05 Claire Kenyon, Ecole Normale Superieur, Lyon
Error-resilient DNA computing
6:00 Dinner
Wednesday, March 26, 1997 (DIMACS)
8:00,8:30 Van pick-up
Breakfast
9:00-9:25 Jacob van den Berg, CWI
Dependent random graphs and spatial epidemics.
9:35-10:25 Peter Winkler, Lucent Technologies
Hard constraints and the Bethe lattice.
10:30-10:55 Break
10:55-11:20 Jeff Stief, University of Gothenburg
Phase transitions for Markov random fields:
some results and some questiosn.
11:30-11:55 Eric Vigoda, University of California at Berkeley
Approximately counting up to four.
12:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:25 James Propp, MIT
Coupling-from-the-past for unbiased Monte Carlo sampling.
2:35-3:00 Alan Sokal, NYU
Monte Carlo methods for self-avoiding walks.
3:00-3:35 Tea
3:40-4:40 Problem Session
4:50-5:50 Problem Session
6:30 Dinner
Thursday, March 27, 1997 (DIMACS)
8:00,8:30 Van pick-up
Breakfast
9:00-9:25 Veronique Gayrard, CNRS
Gibbs states in the Hopfield model.
9:35-10:00 Chuck Newman, Courant Institute
Greedy spin glasses.
10:00-10:30 Break
10:30-10:55 Michel Talagrand, Ohio State University
Rigourous results for spin glasses at high and low temperature.
11:05-11:55 Geoffrey Grimmett, Cambridge University
Percolation and the random cluster model.
12:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-2:50 Dominic Welsh, Oxford University
Computational Complexity of the Tutte polynomial.
3:00-3:25 Joel Spencer, Courant Institute
Why 4/3? A birth model explanation for scaling in
the random graph.
3:35-4:00 Jean Bourgain, Institute for Advanced Study
Sharp threshold intervals.
Tea
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