Dr. Alexander Zass

We consider a random diffusion dynamics for an infinite system of hard spheres of two different sizes evolving in Rd, its reversible probability measure, and its projection on the subset of the large spheres. The main feature is the occurrence of an attractive short-range dynamical interaction – known in the physics literature as a depletion interaction – between the large spheres, which is induced by the hidden presence of the small ones. By
considering the asymptotic limit for such a system when the density of the particles is high, we also obtain a constructive dynamical approach to the famous discrete geometry problem of maximisation of the contact number of n identical spheres in Rd. As support material, we propose numerical simulations in the form of movies.

We study a class of infinite-dimensional diffusions under Gibbsian interactions, in the context of marked point configurations: the starting points belong to ℝ^d, and the marks are the paths of Langevin diffusions. We use the entropy method to prove existence of an infinite-volume Gibbs point process and use cluster expansion tools to provide an explicit activity domain in which uniqueness holds.

We present a uniqueness result for Gibbs point processes with interactions that come from a non-negative pair potential; in particular, we provide an explicit uniqueness region in terms of activity z and inverse temperature β. The technique used relies on applying to the continuous setting the classical Dobrushin criterion. We also present a comparison to the two other uniqueness methods of cluster expansion and disagreement percolation, which can also be applied for this type of interactions.

In this work we consider a system of infinitely many interacting diffusions as a marked Gibbs point process. With this perspective, we show, for a large class of stable and regular interactions, existence and (conjecture) uniqueness of an infinite-volume Gibbs process. In order to prove existence we use the specific entropy as a tightness tool. For the uniqueness problem, we use cluster expansion to prove a Ruelle bound, and conjecture how this would lead to the uniqueness of the Gibbs process as solution of the Kirkwood-Salsburg equation.

We construct marked Gibbs point processes in ℝ^d under quite general assumptions. Firstly, we allow for interaction functionals that may be unbounded and whose range is not assumed to be uniformly bounded. Indeed, our typical interaction admits an as finite but random range. Secondly, the random marks - attached to the locations in ℝ^d - belong to a general normed space S. They are not bounded, but their law should admit a super-exponential moment. The approach used here relies on the so-called entropy method and large-deviation tools in order to prove tightness of a family of finite-volume Gibbs point processes. An application to infinite-dimensional interacting diffusions is also presented.