Past Probability Seminars Spring 2020
Spring 2019
Thursdays in 901 Van Vleck Hall at 2:25 PM, unless otherwise noted. We usually end for questions at 3:15 PM.
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January 31, Oanh Nguyen, Princeton
Title: Survival and extinction of epidemics on random graphs with general degrees
Abstract: We establish the necessary and sufficient criterion for the contact process on Galton-Watson trees (resp. random graphs) to exhibit the phase of extinction (resp. short survival). We prove that the survival threshold $\lambda_1$ for a Galton-Watson tree is strictly positive if and only if its offspring distribution has an exponential tail, settling a conjecture by Huang and Durrett. On the random graph with degree distribution $D$, we show that if $D$ has an exponential tail, then for small enough $\lambda$ the contact process with the all-infected initial condition survives for polynomial time with high probability, while for large enough $\lambda$ it runs over exponential time with high probability. When $D$ is subexponential, the contact process typically displays long survival for any fixed $\lambda>0$. Joint work with Shankar Bhamidi, Danny Nam, and Allan Sly.
February 7, Yu Gu, CMU
Title: Fluctuations of the KPZ equation in d\geq 2 in a weak disorder regime
Abstract: We will discuss some recent work on the Edwards-Wilkinson limit of the KPZ equation with a small coupling constant in d\geq 2.