The clairvoyant demon has a hard task

Consider the integer lattice L = ℤ2. For some m [ges ] 4, let us colour each column of this lattice independently and uniformly with one of m colours. We do the same for the rows, independently of the columns. A point of L will be called blocked if its row and column have the same colour. We say that this random configuration percolates if there is a path in L starting at the origin, consisting of rightward and upward unit steps, avoiding the blocked points. As a problem arising in distributed computing, it has been conjectured that for m [ges ] 4 the configuration percolates with positive probability. This question remains open, but we prove that the probability that there is percolation to distance n but not to infinity is not exponentially small in n. This narrows the range of methods available for proving the conjecture

Kinetics of ballistic annihilation and branching

We consider a one-dimensional model consisting of an assembly of two-velocity particles moving freely between collisions. When two particles meet, they instantaneously annihilate each other and disappear from the system. Moreover each moving particle can spontaneously generate an offspring having the same velocity as its mother with probability 1-q. This model is solved analytically in mean-field approximation and studied by numerical simulations. It is found that for q=1/2 the system exhibits a dynamical phase transition. For q<1/2, the slow dynamics of the system is governed by the coarsening of clusters of particles having the same velocities, while for q>1/2 the system relaxes rapidly towards its stationary state characterized by a distribution of small cluster sizes.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures, uses multicol, epic, eepic and eepicemu. Also avaiable at http://mykonos.unige.ch/~rey/pubt.htm

Polymer pinning in a random medium as influence percolation

In this article we discuss a set of geometric ideas which shed some light on the question of directed polymer pinning in the presence of bulk disorder. Differing from standard methods and techniques, we transform the problem to a particular dependent percolative system and relate the pinning transition to a percolation transition

Predicting the Drug Release Kinetics of Matrix Tablets

In this paper we develop two mathematical models to predict the release kinetics of a water soluble drug from a polymer/excipient matrix tablet. The first of our models consists of a random walk on a weighted graph, where the vertices of the graph represent particles of drug, excipient and polymer, respectively. The graph itself is the contact graph of a multidisperse random sphere packing. The second model describes the dissolution and the subsequent diffusion of the active drug out of a porous matrix using a system of partial differential equations. The predictions of both models show good qualitative agreement with experimental release curves. The models will provide tools for designing better controlled release devices.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures; Elaborated at the first Workshop on the Application of Mathematics to Problems in Biomedicine, December 17-19, 2007 at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealan

The universal Airy_1 and Airy_2 processes in the Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process

In the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) two processes arise in the large time limit: the Airy_1 and Airy_2 processes. The Airy_2 process is an universal limit process occurring also in other models: in a stochastic growth model on 1+1-dimensions, 2d last passage percolation, equilibrium crystals, and in random matrix diffusion. The Airy_1 and Airy_2 processes are defined and discussed in the context of the TASEP. We also explain a geometric representation of the TASEP from which the connection to growth models and directed last passage percolation is immediate.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, proceeding for the conference in honor of Percy Deift's 60th birthda