Some questions and results on the hard sphere model

Series
Math Physics Seminar
Time
Friday, October 3, 2025 - 11:00am for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Will Perkins – Georgia Tech Department of Computer Science
Organizer
Matthew Powell

The hard sphere model is a simple to define and long studied mathematical model of gas, in which the only interactions are the hard-core constraint that two spheres cannot overlap in space.  In three dimensions it is expected to exhibit a gas-to-crystal phase transition.  Despite its simplicty, rigorous results on the model are rather sparse.  I will introduce the model, discuss some of the main open questions, and present some results new and old.