Universality for mathematical and physical systems

All physical systems in equilibrium obey the laws of thermodynamics. In other words, whatever the precise nature of the interaction between the atoms and molecules at the microscopic level, at the macroscopic level, physical systems exhibit universal behavior in the sense that they are all governed by the same laws and formulae of thermodynamics. In this paper we describe some recent history of universality ideas in physics starting with Wigner's model for the scattering of neutrons off large nuclei and show how these ideas have led mathematicians to investigate universal behavior for a variety of mathematical systems. This is true not only for systems which have a physical origin, but also for systems which arise in a purely mathematical context such as the Riemann hypothesis, and a version of the card game solitaire called patience sorting.Comment: New version contains some additional explication of the problems considered in the text and additional reference

Some Open Problems in Random Matrix Theory and the Theory of Integrable Systems. II

We describe a list of open problems in random matrix theory and the theory of integrable systems that was presented at the conference Asymptotics in Integrable Systems, Random Matrices and Random Processes and Universality, Centre de Recherches Mathematiques, Montreal, June 7-11, 2015. We also describe progress that has been made on problems in an earlier list presented by the author on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 2005 (see [Deift P., Contemp. Math., Vol. 458, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2008, 419-430, arXiv:0712.0849]).Comment: for Part I see arXiv:0712.084

A Riemann-Hilbert approach to some theorems on Toeplitz operators and orthogonal polynomials

In this paper the authors show how to use Riemann-Hilbert techniques to prove various results, some old, some new, in the theory of Toeplitz operators and orthogonal polynomials on the unit circle (OPUC's). There are four main results: the first concerns the approximation of the inverse of a Toeplitz operator by the inverses of its finite truncations. The second concerns a new proof of the `hard' part of Baxter's theorem, and the third concerns the Born approximation for a scattering problem on the lattice $\mathbb{Z}_+$. The fourth and final result concerns a basic proposition of Golinskii-Ibragimov arising in their analysis of the Strong Szeg\"{o} Limit Theorem