BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Recent progress on the cutoff phenomenon - Justin Salez (Universit
 é Paris-Dauphine)
DTSTART:20251007T130000Z
DTEND:20251007T140000Z
UID:TALK236233@talks.cam.ac.uk
DESCRIPTION:The cutoff phenomenon is an abrupt transition from out of equi
 librium to equilibrium undergone by certain Markov processes in the limit 
 where the size of the state space tends to in-finity. Discovered four deca
 des ago in the context of card shuffling\, this surprising phenomenon has 
 since then been observed in a variety of models\, from random walks on gro
 ups or complex networks to interacting particle systems. It is now believe
 d to be universal among fast-mixing high-dimensional processes. Yet\, curr
 ent proofs are heavily model-dependent\, and identifying the general condi
 tions that trigger a cutoff remains one of the biggest challenges in the q
 uantitative analysis of finite Markov chains. In this talk\, I will provid
 e a self-contained introduction to this fascinating question\, and then de
 scribe a recent partial answer based on entropy\, curvature\, and local sp
 ectral gaps.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR