November online meeting

Our monthly meeting will take place on Monday the 29th of November, from 4pm to 6pm (Central European Time). Our speakers will be Elia Bisi and Jonathan Novak. The zoom link will be sent to the members of the project through the mailing list. If you are interested in participating and you are not a PIICQ participant, please register sending us an email!

First talk by Elia Bisi at 4pm

Title: Polymer models, geometric RSK and Whittaker functions.

Abstract: I will give an overview of several joint works with Nikos Zygouras and Neil O’Connell about polymer models in inverse-gamma random environments, with various symmetries and path geometries. I will introduce the main tools involved: geometric RSK-type correspondences and Whittaker functions (on general linear and orthogonal groups). In the zero temperature limit, one recovers formulas for last passage percolation times in terms of (classical and symplectic) Schur functions, some of which date back to Baik-Rains (2001).

Second talk by Jonathan Novak at 5pm

Title: Oscillatory asymptotics for HCIZ and BGW integrals.

Abstract: I will disuss the longstanding problem of obtaining oscillatory asymptotics for the Harish-Chandra/Itzykson-Zuber and Bars-Green/Brezin-Gross-Witten/Wadia matrix integrals, which are objects of basic interest in nonabelian gauge theories and random matrix theory, and the relationship of this problem to monotone Hurwitz numbers.