Ewens measures on compact groups and hypergeometric kernels

On unitary compact groups the decomposition of a generic element into product of reflections induces a decomposition of the characteristic polynomial into a product of factors. When the group is equipped with the Haar probability measure, these factors become independent random variables with explicit distributions. Beyond the known results on the orthogonal and unitary groups (O(n) and U(n)), we treat the symplectic case. In U(n), this induces a family of probability changes analogous to the biassing in the Ewens sampling formula known for the symmetric group. Then we study the spectral properties of these measures, connected to the pure Fisher-Hartvig symbol on the unit circle. The associated orthogonal polynomials give rise, as $n$ tends to infinity to a limit kernel at the singularity.Comment: New version of the previous paper "Hua-Pickrell measures on general compact groups". The article has been completely re-written (the presentation has changed and some proofs have been simplified). New references added

Phase transitions in quantum chromodynamics

The current understanding of finite temperature phase transitions in QCD is reviewed. A critical discussion of refined phase transition criteria in numerical lattice simulations and of analytical tools going beyond the mean-field level in effective continuum models for QCD is presented. Theoretical predictions about the order of the transitions are compared with possible experimental manifestations in heavy-ion collisions. Various places in phenomenological descriptions are pointed out, where more reliable data for QCD's equation of state would help in selecting the most realistic scenario among those proposed. Unanswered questions are raised about the relevance of calculations which assume thermodynamic equilibrium. Promising new approaches to implement nonequilibrium aspects in the thermodynamics of heavy-ion collisions are described.Comment: 156 pages, RevTex. Tables II,VIII,IX and Fig.s 1-38 are not included as postscript files. I would like to ask the requestors to copy the missing tables and figures from the corresponding journal-referenc

On a flow of operators associated to virtual permutations

In (Comptes Rend Acad Sci Paris 316:773–778, 1993), Kerov, Olshanski and Vershik introduce the so-called virtual permutations, defined as families of permutations$(\sigma _{N})_{N\geq 1}$, σ N in the symmetric group of order N, such that the cycle structure of σ N can be deduced from the structure of σ N+1 simply by removing the element N + 1. The virtual permutations, and in particular the probability measures on the corresponding space which are invariant by conjugation, have been studied in a more detailed way by Tsilevich in (J Math Sci 87(6):4072–4081, 1997) and (Theory Probab Appl 44(1):60–74, 1999). In the present article, we prove that for a large class of such invariant measures (containing in particular the Ewens measure of any parameter θ ≥ 0), it is possible to associate a flow $(T^{\alpha })_{\alpha \in \mathbb{R}}$ of random operators on a suitable function space. Moreover, if $(\sigma _{N})_{N\geq 1}1$ is a random virtual permutation following a distribution in the class described above, the operator T α can be interpreted as the limit, in a sense which has to be made precise, of the permutation $\sigma _{N}^{\alpha _{N}}$, where N goes to infinity and α N is equivalent to α N. In relation with this interpretation, we prove that the eigenvalues of the infinitesimal generator of $(T^{\alpha })_{\alpha \in \mathbb{R}}$ are equal to the limit of the rescaled eigenangles of the permutation matrix associated to σ N

Commuting and Congestion: A Simulation Model of a Decentralized Metropolitan Area

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75421/1/1540-6229.00527.pd