| Members Seminar | |
| Topic: | The Role of Symmetry in Phase Transitions |
| Speaker: | Tom Spencer |
| Affiliation: | Professor, School of Mathematics |
| Date: | Monday, January 23 |
| Time/Room: | 2:00pm - 3:00pm/S-101 |
This talk will review some theorems and conjectures about phase transitions of interacting spin systems in statistical mechanics. A phase transition may be thought of as a change in a typical spin configuration from ordered state at low temperature to disordered state at high temperature. I will illustrate how the symmetry of a spin system plays a crucial role in its qualitative behavior. Of particular interest is the connection between supersymmetric statistical mechanics and the spectral theory of random band matrices.