Random Matrices in 2D, Laplacian Growth and Operator Theory

Since it was first applied to the study of nuclear interactions by Wigner and Dyson, almost 60 years ago, Random Matrix Theory (RMT) has developed into a field of its own within applied mathematics, and is now essential to many parts of theoretical physics, from condensed matter to high energy. The fundamental results obtained so far rely mostly on the theory of random matrices in one dimension (the dimensionality of the spectrum, or equilibrium probability density). In the last few years, this theory has been extended to the case where the spectrum is two-dimensional, or even fractal, with dimensions between 1 and 2. In this article, we review these recent developments and indicate some physical problems where the theory can be applied.Comment: 88 pages, 8 figure

Approximation and spectral analysis for large structured linear systems.

In this work we are interested in standard and less standard structured linear systems coming from applications in various _elds of computational mathematics and often modeled by integral and/or di_erential equations. Starting from classical Toeplitz and Circulant structures, we consider some extensions as g-Toeplitz and g-Circulants matrices appearing in several contexts in numerical analysis and applications. Then we consider special matrices arising from collocation methods for di_erential equations: also in this case, under suitable assumptions we observe a Toeplitz structure. More in detail we _rst propose a detailed study of singular values and eigenvalues of g-circulant matrices and then we provide an analysis of distribution of g-Toeplitz sequences. Furthermore, when possible, we consider Krylov space methods with special attention to the minimization of the computational work. When the involved dimensions are large, the Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (PCG) method is recommended because of the much stronger robustness with respect to the propagation of errors. In that case, crucial issues are the convergence speed of this iterative solver, the use of special techniques (preconditioning, multilevel techniques) for accelerating the convergence, and a careful study of the spectral properties of such matrices. Finally, the use of radial basis functions allow of determining and studying the asymptotic behavior of the spectral radii of collocation matrices approximating elliptic boundary value problems