Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In first-passage percolation (FPP), one places random non-negative weights on the edges of a graph and considers the induced weighted graph metric. Of particular interest is the case where the graph is Z^d, the standard d-dimensional cubic lattice, and many of the questions involve a comparison between the asymptotics of the random metric and the standard Euclidean one. In this talk, I will survey some of my recent work on the order of fluctuations of the metric, focusing on (a) lower bounds for the expected distance and (b) our recent sublinear bound for the variance for edge-weight distributions that have 2+log moments, with corresponding concentration results. This second work addresses a question posed by Benjamini-Kalai-Schramm in their celebrated 2003 paper, where such a bound was proved for only Bernoulli weights using hypercontractivity. Our techniques draw heavily on entropy methods from concentration of measure.

The existence of large BV (total variation) solution for compressible Euler equations in one space dimension is a major open problem in the hyperbolic conservation laws, where the small BV existence was first established by James Glimm in his celebrated paper in 1964. In this talk, I will discuss the recent progress toward this longstanding open problem joint with my collaborators. The singularity (shock) formation and behaviors of large data solutions will also be discussed.

In the talk, an asymptotic behaviour of first order properties of the Erdos-Renyi random graph G(n,p) will be considered. The random graph obeys the zero-one law if for each first-order property L either its probability tends to 0 or tends to 1. The random graph obeys the zero-one k-law if for each property L which can be expressed by first-order formula with quantifier depth at most k either its probability tends to 0 or tends to 1. Zero-one laws were proved for different classes of functions p=p(n). The class n^{-a} is at the top of interest. In 1988 S. Shelah and J.H. Spencer proved that the random graph G(n,n^{-a}) obeys zero-one law if a is positive and irrational. If a is rational from the interval (0,1], then G(n,n^{-a}) does not obey the zero-one law. I obtain zero-one k-laws for some rational a from (0,1]. For any first-order property L let us consider the set S(L) of a from (0,1) such that a probability of G(n,n^{-a}) to satisfy L does not converges or its limit is not zero or one. Spencer proved that there exists L such that S(L) is infinite. Recently in the joint work with Spencer we obtain new results on a distribution of elements of S(L) and its limit points.

In 1985, Barnsley and Harrington defined a "Mandelbrot Set" M for pairs of similarities -- this is the set of complex numbers z with norm less than 1 for which the limit set of the semigroup generated by the similarities x -> zx and x -> z(x-1)+1 is connected. Equivalently, M is the closure of the set of roots of polynomials with coefficients in {-1,0,1}. Barnsley and Harrington already noted the (numerically apparent) existence of infinitely many small "holes" in M, and conjectured that these holes were genuine. These holes are very interesting, since they are "exotic" components of the space of (2 generator) Schottky semigroups. The existence of at least one hole was rigorously confirmed by Bandt in 2002, but his methods were not strong enough to show the existence of infinitely many holes; one difficulty with his approach was that he was not able to understand the interior points of M, and on the basis of numerical evidence he conjectured that the interior points are dense away from the real axis. We introduce the technique of traps to construct and certify interior points of M, and use them to prove Bandt's Conjecture. Furthermore, our techniques let us certify the existence of infinitely many holes in M. This is joint work with Sarah Koch and Alden Walker.