This conference is part of the MAST Lecture Series organised by the Mathematics Department of the University of Luxembourg with the support of the FNR. The objective is to share the most recent developments of mathematics and their applications in the Luxembourg scientific community.
Abstract
Large ensembles of points with Coulomb interactions arise in various settings of condensed matter physics, classical and quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, random matrices and even approximation theory, and they give rise to a variety of questions pertaining to analysis, Partial Differential Equations and probability. We will first review these motivations, then present the “mean-field” derivation of effective models and equations describing the system at the macroscopic scale. We then explain how to analyze the next order behavior, giving information on the configurations at the microscopic level and connecting with crystallization questions, and finish with the description of the effect of temperature.
About the speaker
Sylvia Serfaty is Professor of Mathematics at Université Pierre et Marie Curie and is Global distinguished Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (New York University). She has made key contributions to the analysis of nonlinear Partial Differential Equations arising from physics. She was awarded the Henri Poincaré Prize in 2012, and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. In 2018, she was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio.