Cumulants, lattice paths, and orthogonal polynomials

A formula expressing free cumulants in terms of the Jacobi parameters of the corresponding orthogonal polynomials is derived. It combines Flajolet's theory of continued fractions and Lagrange inversion. For the converse we discuss Gessel-Viennot theory to express Hankel determinants in terms of various cumulants.Comment: 11 pages, AMS LaTeX, uses pstricks; revised according to referee's suggestions, in particular cut down last section and corrected some wrong attribution

Matrix models and stochastic growth in Donaldson-Thomas theory

We show that the partition functions which enumerate Donaldson-Thomas invariants of local toric Calabi-Yau threefolds without compact divisors can be expressed in terms of specializations of the Schur measure. We also discuss the relevance of the Hall-Littlewood and Jack measures in the context of BPS state counting and study the partition functions at arbitrary points of the Kaehler moduli space. This rewriting in terms of symmetric functions leads to a unitary one-matrix model representation for Donaldson-Thomas theory. We describe explicitly how this result is related to the unitary matrix model description of Chern-Simons gauge theory. This representation is used to show that the generating functions for Donaldson-Thomas invariants are related to tau-functions of the integrable Toda and Toeplitz lattice hierarchies. The matrix model also leads to an interpretation of Donaldson-Thomas theory in terms of non-intersecting paths in the lock-step model of vicious walkers. We further show that these generating functions can be interpreted as normalization constants of a corner growth/last-passage stochastic model.Comment: 31 pages; v2: comments and references added; v3: presentation improved, comments added; final version to appear in Journal of Mathematical Physic

On General-n Coefficients in Series Expansions for Row Spin-Spin Correlation Functions in the Two-Dimensional Ising Model

We consider spin-spin correlation functions for spins along a row, $R_n = \langle \sigma_{0,0}\sigma_{n,0}\rangle$, in the two-dimensional Ising model. We discuss a method for calculating general-$n$ expressions for coefficients in high-temperature and low-temperature series expansions of $R_n$ and apply it to obtain such expressions for several higher-order coefficients. In addition to their intrinsic interest, these results could be useful in the continuing quest for an ordinary differential equation whose solution would determine $R_n$, analogous to the known ordinary differential equation whose solution determines the diagonal correlation function $\langle \sigma_{0,0}\sigma_{n,n}\rangle$ in this model.Comment: 21 pages, late

Gibbs and Quantum Discrete Spaces

Gibbs measure is one of the central objects of the modern probability, mathematical statistical physics and euclidean quantum field theory. Here we define and study its natural generalization for the case when the space, where the random field is defined is itself random. Moreover, this randomness is not given apriori and independently of the configuration, but rather they depend on each other, and both are given by Gibbs procedure; We call the resulting object a Gibbs family because it parametrizes Gibbs fields on different graphs in the support of the distribution. We study also quantum (KMS) analog of Gibbs families. Various applications to discrete quantum gravity are given.Comment: 37 pages, 2 figure