Density of imaginary multiplicative chaos via Malliavin calculus
We consider the imaginary Gaussian multiplicative chaos, i.e. the complex Wick exponential for a log-correlated Gaussian field in dimensions. We prove a basic density result, showing that for any nonzero continuous test function , the complex-valued random variable has a smooth density w.r.t. the Lebesgue measure on . As a corollary, we deduce that the negative moments of imaginary chaos on the unit circle do not correspond to the analytic continuation of the Fyodorov-Bouchaud formula, even when well-defined. Somewhat surprisingly, basic density results are not easy to prove for imaginary chaos and one of the main contributions of the article is introducing Malliavin calculus to the study of (complex) multiplicative chaos. To apply Malliavin calculus to imaginary chaos, we develop a new decomposition theorem for non-degenerate log-correlated fields via a small detour to operator theory, and obtain small ball probabilities for Sobolev norms of imaginary chaos.
Random walks on hyperbolic spaces: Concentration inequalities and probabilistic Tits alternative
The goal of this article is two-fold: in a first part, we prove Azuma-Hoeffding type concentration inequalities around the drift for the displacement of non-elementary random walks on hyperbolic spaces. For a proper hyperbolic space , we obtain explicit bounds that depend only on , the size of support of the measure as in the classical case of sums of independent random variables, and on the norm of the driving probability measure in the left regular representation of the group of isometries. We obtain uniform bounds in the case of hyperbolic groups and effective bounds for simple linear groups of rank-one. In a second part, using our concentration inequalities, we give quantitative finite-time estimates on the probability that two independent random walks on the isometry group of a hyperbolic space generate a free non-abelian subgroup. Our concentration results follow from a more general, but less explicit statement that we prove for cocycles which satisfy a certain cohomological equation. For example, this also allows us to obtain subgaussian concentration bounds around the top Lyapunov exponent of random matrix products in arbitrary dimension.
Periodic Lorentz gas with small scatterers
We prove limit laws for infinite horizon planar periodic Lorentz gases when, as time tends to infinity, the scatterer size may also tend to zero simultaneously at a sufficiently slow pace. In particular we obtain a non-standard Central Limit Theorem as well as a Local Limit Theorem for the displacement function. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first results on an intermediate case between the two well-studied regimes with superdiffusive scaling (i) for fixed infinite horizon configurations-letting first and then -studied e.g. by Szász and Varjú (J Stat Phys 129(1):59-80, 2007) and (ii) Boltzmann-Grad type situations-letting first and then -studied by Marklof and Tóth (Commun Math Phys 347(3):933-981, 2016) .
Global solutions of aggregation equations and other flows with random diffusion
Aggregation equations, such as the parabolic-elliptic Patlak-Keller-Segel model, are known to have an optimal threshold for global existence versus finite-time blow-up. In particular, if the diffusion is absent, then all smooth solutions with finite second moment can exist only locally in time. Nevertheless, one can ask whether global existence can be restored by adding a suitable noise to the equation, so that the dynamics are now stochastic. Inspired by the work of Buckmaster et al. (Int Math Res Not IMRN 23:9370-9385, 2020) showing that, with high probability, the inviscid SQG equation with random diffusion has global classical solutions, we investigate whether suitable random diffusion can restore global existence for a large class of active scalar equations in arbitrary dimension with possibly singular velocity fields. This class includes Hamiltonian flows, such as the SQG equation and its generalizations, and gradient flows, such as those arising in aggregation models. For this class, we show global existence of solutions in Gevrey-type Fourier-Lebesgue spaces with quantifiable high probability.
Non-simple conformal loop ensembles on Liouville quantum gravity and the law of CLE percolation interfaces
We study the structure of the Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) surfaces that are cut out as one explores a conformal loop-ensemble for in (4, 8) that is drawn on an independent -LQG surface for . The results are similar in flavor to the ones from our companion paper dealing with for in (8/3, 4), where the loops of the CLE are disjoint and simple. In particular, we encode the combined structure of the LQG surface and the in terms of stable growth-fragmentation trees or their variants, which also appear in the asymptotic study of peeling processes on decorated planar maps. This has consequences for questions that do a priori not involve LQG surfaces: In our paper entitled "" described the law of interfaces obtained when coloring the loops of a independently into two colors with respective probabilities and . This description was complete up to one missing parameter . The results of the present paper about CLE on LQG allow us to determine its value in terms of and . It shows in particular that and are related via a continuum analog of the Edwards-Sokal coupling between percolation and the -state Potts model (which makes sense even for non-integer between 1 and 4) if and only if . This provides further evidence for the long-standing belief that and represent the scaling limits of percolation and the -Potts model when and are related in this way. Another consequence of the formula for is the value of half-plane arm exponents for such divide-and-color models (a.k.a. fuzzy Potts models) that turn out to take a somewhat different form than the usual critical exponents for two-dimensional models.
Sharp metastability transition for two-dimensional bootstrap percolation with symmetric isotropic threshold rules
We study two-dimensional critical bootstrap percolation models. We establish that a class of these models including all isotropic threshold rules with a convex symmetric neighbourhood, undergoes a sharp metastability transition. This extends previous instances proved for several specific rules. The paper supersedes a draft by Alexander Holroyd and the first author from 2012. While it served a role in the subsequent development of bootstrap percolation universality, we have chosen to adopt a more contemporary viewpoint in its present form.
An asymptotic formula for the variance of the number of zeroes of a stationary Gaussian process
We study the variance of the number of zeroes of a stationary Gaussian process on a long interval. We give a simple asymptotic description under mild mixing conditions. This allows us to characterise minimal and maximal growth. We show that a small (symmetrised) atom in the spectral measure at a special frequency does not affect the asymptotic growth of the variance, while an atom at any other frequency results in maximal growth.
Finite free convolutions of polynomials
We study three convolutions of polynomials in the context of free probability theory. We prove that these convolutions can be written as the expected characteristic polynomials of sums and products of unitarily invariant random matrices. The symmetric additive and multiplicative convolutions were introduced by Walsh and Szegö in different contexts, and have been studied for a century. The asymmetric additive convolution, and the connection of all of them with random matrices, is new. By developing the analogy with free probability, we prove that these convolutions produce real rooted polynomials and provide strong bounds on the locations of the roots of these polynomials.
Private measures, random walks, and synthetic data
Differential privacy is a mathematical concept that provides an information-theoretic security guarantee. While differential privacy has emerged as a de facto standard for guaranteeing privacy in data sharing, the known mechanisms to achieve it come with some serious limitations. Utility guarantees are usually provided only for a fixed, a priori specified set of queries. Moreover, there are no utility guarantees for more complex-but very common-machine learning tasks such as clustering or classification. In this paper we overcome some of these limitations. Working with metric privacy, a powerful generalization of differential privacy, we develop a polynomial-time algorithm that creates a from a data set. This private measure allows us to efficiently construct private synthetic data that are accurate for a wide range of statistical analysis tools. Moreover, we prove an asymptotically sharp min-max result for private measures and synthetic data in general compact metric spaces, for any fixed privacy budget bounded away from zero. A key ingredient in our construction is a new , whose joint distribution of steps is as regular as that of independent random variables, yet which deviates from the origin logarithmically slowly.
Harnack inequality and one-endedness of UST on reversible random graphs
We prove that for recurrent, reversible graphs, the following conditions are equivalent: (a) existence and uniqueness of the potential kernel, (b) existence and uniqueness of harmonic measure from infinity, (c) a new anchored Harnack inequality, and (d) one-endedness of the wired uniform spanning tree. In particular this gives a proof of the anchored (and in fact also elliptic) Harnack inequality on the UIPT. This also complements and strengthens some results of Benjamini et al. (Ann Probab 29(1):1-65, 2001). Furthermore, we make progress towards a conjecture of Aldous and Lyons by proving that these conditions are fulfilled for strictly subdiffusive recurrent unimodular graphs. Finally, we discuss the behaviour of the random walk conditioned to never return to the origin, which is well defined as a consequence of our results.
Global well-posedness of the 2D nonlinear Schrödinger equation with multiplicative spatial white noise on the full space
We consider the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with multiplicative spatial white noise and an arbitrary polynomial nonlinearity on the two-dimensional full space domain. We prove global well-posedness by using a gauge-transform introduced by Hairer and Labbé (Electron Commun Probab 20(43):11, 2015) and constructing the solution as a limit of solutions to a family of approximating equations. This paper extends a previous result by Debussche and Martin (Nonlinearity 32(4):1147-1174, 2019) with a sub-quadratic nonlinearity.
CLT for NESS of a reaction-diffusion model
We study the scaling properties of the non-equilibrium stationary states (NESS) of a reaction-diffusion model. Under a suitable smallness condition, we show that the density of particles satisfies a law of large numbers with respect to the NESS, with an explicit rate of convergence, and we also show that at mesoscopic scales the NESS is well approximated by a local equilibrium (product) measure, in the total variation distance. In addition, in dimensions we show a central limit theorem for the density of particles under the NESS. The corresponding Gaussian limit can be represented as an independent sum of a white noise and a massive Gaussian free field, and in particular it presents macroscopic correlations.
The Brownian transport map
Contraction properties of transport maps between probability measures play an important role in the theory of functional inequalities. The actual construction of such maps, however, is a non-trivial task and, so far, relies mostly on the theory of optimal transport. In this work, we take advantage of the infinite-dimensional nature of the Gaussian measure and construct a new transport map, based on the Föllmer process, which pushes forward the Wiener measure onto probability measures on Euclidean spaces. Utilizing the tools of the Malliavin and stochastic calculus in Wiener space, we show that this Brownian transport map is a contraction in various settings where the analogous questions for optimal transport maps are open. The contraction properties of the Brownian transport map enable us to prove functional inequalities in Euclidean spaces, which are either completely new or improve on current results. Further and related applications of our contraction results are the existence of Stein kernels with desirable properties (which lead to new central limit theorems), as well as new insights into the Kannan-Lovász-Simonovits conjecture. We go beyond the Euclidean setting and address the problem of contractions on the Wiener space itself. We show that optimal transport maps and causal optimal transport maps (which are related to Brownian transport maps) between the Wiener measure and other target measures on Wiener space exhibit very different behaviors.
Approximation of martingale couplings on the line in the adapted weak topology
Our main result is to establish stability of martingale couplings: suppose that is a martingale coupling with marginals . Then, given approximating marginal measures in convex order, we show that there exists an approximating martingale coupling with marginals . In mathematical finance, prices of European call/put option yield information on the marginal measures of the arbitrage free pricing measures. The above result asserts that small variations of call/put prices lead only to small variations on the level of arbitrage free pricing measures. While these facts have been anticipated for some time, the actual proof requires somewhat intricate stability results for the adapted Wasserstein distance. Notably the result has consequences for several related problems. Specifically, it is relevant for numerical approximations, it leads to a new proof of the monotonicity principle of martingale optimal transport and it implies stability of weak martingale optimal transport as well as optimal Skorokhod embedding. On the mathematical finance side this yields continuity of the robust pricing problem for exotic options and VIX options with respect to market data. These applications will be detailed in two companion papers.
Biased periodic Aztec diamond and an elliptic curve
We study random domino tilings of the Aztec diamond with a biased periodic weight function and associate a linear flow on an elliptic curve to this model. Our main result is a double integral formula for the correlation kernel, in which the integrand is expressed in terms of this flow. For special choices of parameters the flow is periodic, and this allows us to perform a saddle point analysis for the correlation kernel. In these cases we compute the local correlations in the smooth disordered (or gaseous) region. The special example in which the flow has period six is worked out in more detail, and we show that in that case the boundary of the rough disordered region is an algebraic curve of degree eight.
Law of large numbers for the drift of the two-dimensional wreath product
We prove the law of large numbers for the drift of random walks on the two-dimensional lamplighter group, under the assumption that the random walk has finite -moment. This result is in contrast with classical examples of abelian groups, where the displacement after steps, normalised by its mean, does not concentrate, and the limiting distribution of the normalised -step displacement admits a density whose support is . We study further examples of groups, some with random walks satisfying LLN for drift and other examples where such concentration phenomenon does not hold, and study relation of this property with asymptotic geometry of groups.
Matrix Whittaker processes
We study a discrete-time Markov process on triangular arrays of matrices of size , driven by inverse Wishart random matrices. The components of the right edge evolve as multiplicative random walks on positive definite matrices with one-sided interactions and can be viewed as a -dimensional generalisation of log-gamma polymer partition functions. We establish intertwining relations to prove that, for suitable initial configurations of the triangular process, the bottom edge has an autonomous Markovian evolution with an explicit transition kernel. We then show that, for a special singular initial configuration, the fixed-time law of the bottom edge is a matrix Whittaker measure, which we define. To achieve this, we perform a Laplace approximation that requires solving a constrained minimisation problem for certain energy functions of matrix arguments on directed graphs.
Approximation of SDEs: a stochastic sewing approach
We give a new take on the error analysis of approximations of stochastic differential equations (SDEs), utilizing and developing the stochastic sewing lemma of Lê (Electron J Probab 25:55, 2020. 10.1214/20-EJP442). This approach allows one to exploit regularization by noise effects in obtaining convergence rates. In our first application we show convergence (to our knowledge for the first time) of the Euler-Maruyama scheme for SDEs driven by fractional Brownian motions with non-regular drift. When the Hurst parameter is and the drift is , and , we show the strong and almost sure rates of convergence to be , for any . Our conditions on the regularity of the drift are optimal in the sense that they coincide with the conditions needed for the strong uniqueness of solutions from Catellier and Gubinelli (Stoch Process Appl 126(8):2323-2366, 2016. 10.1016/j.spa.2016.02.002). In a second application we consider the approximation of SDEs driven by multiplicative standard Brownian noise where we derive the almost optimal rate of convergence of the Euler-Maruyama scheme for drift, for any .
Free boundary dimers: random walk representation and scaling limit
We study the dimer model on subgraphs of the square lattice in which vertices on a prescribed part of the boundary (the free boundary) are possibly unmatched. Each such unmatched vertex is called a monomer and contributes a fixed multiplicative weight to the total weight of the configuration. A bijection described by Giuliani et al. (J Stat Phys 163(2):211-238, 2016) relates this model to a standard dimer model but on a non-bipartite graph. The Kasteleyn matrix of this dimer model describes a walk with transition weights that are negative along the free boundary. Yet under certain assumptions, which are in particular satisfied in the infinite volume limit in the upper half-plane, we prove an effective, true random walk representation for the inverse Kasteleyn matrix. In this case we further show that, independently of the value of , the scaling limit of the centered height function is the Gaussian free field with Neumann (or free) boundary conditions. It is the first example of a discrete model where such boundary conditions arise in the continuum scaling limit.
Planar random-cluster model: fractal properties of the critical phase
This paper is studying the critical regime of the planar random-cluster model on with cluster-weight . More precisely, we prove which are uniform in their boundary conditions and depend only on their extremal lengths. They imply in particular that any fractal boundary is touched by macroscopic clusters, uniformly in its roughness or the configuration on the boundary. Additionally, they imply that . We also obtain a number of properties of so-called arm-events: (two arms in the half-plane, three arms in the half-plane and five arms in the bulk), and properties (even when arms are not alternating between primal and dual), and the fact that the . These results were previously known only for Bernoulli percolation ( ) and the FK-Ising model ( ). Finally, we prove new bounds on the one, two and four-arm exponents for , as well as the one-arm exponent in the half-plane. These improve the previously known bounds, even for Bernoulli percolation.
Superconcentration for minimal surfaces in first passage percolation and disordered Ising ferromagnets
We consider the standard first passage percolation model on with a distribution taking two values . We study the maximal flow through the cylinder between its top and bottom as well as its associated minimal surface(s). We prove that the variance of the maximal flow is superconcentrated, i.e. in , for (for a large enough constant ). Equivalently, we obtain that the ground state energy of a disordered Ising ferromagnet in a cylinder is superconcentrated when opposite boundary conditions are applied at the top and bottom faces and for a large enough constant (which depends on the law of the coupling constants). Our proof is inspired by the proof of Benjamini-Kalai-Schramm (Ann Probab 31:1970-1978, 2003). Yet, one major difficulty in this setting is to control the influence of the edges since the averaging trick used in Benjamini et al. (Ann Probab 31:1970-1978, 2003) fails for surfaces. Of independent interest, we prove that minimal surfaces (in the present discrete setting) cannot have long thin chimneys.