We consider systems of $N$ diffusions in equilibrium interacting through a potential $V$. We study a "height function" which for the special choice $V(x) = \e^{-x}$, coincides with the partition function of a stationary semidiscrete polymer, also known as the (stationary) O'Connell-Yor polymer. For a general class of smooth convex potentials (generalizing the O'Connell-Yor case), we obtain the order of fluctuations of the height function by proving matching upper and lower bounds for the variance of order $N^{2/3}$, the expected scaling for models lying in the KPZ universality class. The models we study are not expected to be integrable and our methods are analytic and non-perturbative, making no use of explicit formulas or any results for the O'Connell-Yor polymer.
We consider the upper and lower tail probabilities for the centered (by time$/24$) and scaled (according to KPZ time$^{1/3}$ scaling) one-point distribution of the Cole-Hopf solution of the KPZ equation when started with initial data drawn from a very general class. For the lower tail, we prove an upper bound which demonstrates a crossover from super-exponential decay with exponent $3$ in the shallow tail to an exponent $5/2$ in the deep tail. For the upper tail, we prove super-exponential decay bounds with exponent $3/2$ at all depth in the tail.
These notes are based on lectures delivered by the authors at a Langeoog seminar of SFB/TR12 "Symmetries and universality in mesoscopic systems" to a mixed audience of mathematicians and theoretical physicists. After a brief outline of the basic physical concepts of equilibrium and nonequilibrium states, the one-dimensional simple exclusion process is introduced as a paradigmatic nonequilibrium interacting particle system. The stationary measure on the ring is derived and the idea of the hydrodynamic limit is sketched. We then introduce the phenomenological Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation a…
We evaluate the configuration exponents of various ensembles of Hamiltonian paths drawn on random planar bicubic maps. These exponents are estimated from the extrapolations of exact enumeration results for finite sizes and compared with their theoretical predictions based on the KPZ relations, as applied to their regular counterpart on the honeycomb lattice. We show that a naive use of these relations does not reproduce the measured exponents but that a simple modification in their application may possibly correct the observed discrepancy. We show that a similar modification is required to rep…
We provide the first tight bounds on the lower tail probability of the one point distribution of the KPZ equation with narrow wedge initial data. Our bounds hold for all sufficiently large times $T$ and demonstrates a crossover between super-exponential decay with exponent $5/2$ (and leading pre-factor $\frac{4}{15π} T^{1/3}$) for tail depth greater than $T^{2/3}$, and exponent $3$ (with leading pre-factor $\frac{1}{12}$) for tail depth less than $T^{2/3}$.
We consider an interacting particles system composed of a Hamiltonian part and perturbed by a conservative stochastic noise so that the full system conserves two quantities: energy and volume. The Hamiltonian part is regulated by a scaling parameter vanishing in the limit. We study the form of the fluctuations of these quantities at equilibrium and derive coupled stochastic partial differential equations with a KPZ flavor.
We consider the stochastic heat equation $\partial_tZ= \partial_x^2 Z - Z \dot W$ on the real line, where $\dot W$ is space-time white noise. $h(t,x)=-\log Z(t,x)$ is interpreted as a solution of the KPZ equation, and $u(t,x)=\partial_x h(t,x)$ as a solution of the stochastic Burgers equation. We take $Z(0,x)=\exp\{B(x)\}$ where $B(x)$ is a two-sided Brownian motion, corresponding to the stationary solution of the stochastic Burgers equation. We show that there exist $0< c_1\le c_2 <\infty$ such that $c_1t^{2/3}\le \Var (\log Z(t,x))\le c_2 t^{2/3}.$ Analogous results are obtained for some mom…
We establish a large deviation principle for the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation, providing precise control over the left tail of the height distribution for narrow wedge initial condition. Our analysis exploits an exact connection between the KPZ one-point distribution and the Airy point process -- an infinite particle Coulomb-gas which arises at the spectral edge in random matrix theory. We develop the large deviation principle for the Airy point process and use it to compute, in a straight-forward and assumption-free manner, the KPZ large deviation rate function in terms of an electrosta…
These notes are based on a talk given at the 2018 Arizona School of Analysis and Mathematical Physics. We give a comprehensive introduction to the KPZ universality class, a conjectured class of stochastic process with local interactions related to random growth processes in $1+1$ dimensions. We describe some of the characteristic properties of the KPZ universality class such as scaling exponents and limiting statistics. In particular, we aim to extract the characteristic properties of the KPZ universality class by understanding the KPZ stochastic partial differential equation by a special disc…
We compute the fluctuation exponents for a solvable model of one-dimensional directed polymers in random environment in the intermediate regime. This regime corresponds to taking the inverse temperature to zero with the size of the system. The exponents satisfy the KPZ scaling relation and coincide with physical predictions. In the critical case, we recover the fluctuation exponents of the Cole-Hopf solution of the KPZ equation in equilibrium and close to equilibrium.
We consider the fluctuation fields of multi-species weakly-asymmetric zero-range interacting particle systems in one dimension, where the mass density of each species is conserved. Although such fields have been studied in systems with a single species, the multi-species setting is much less understood. Among other results, we show that, when the system starts from stationary states, with a particular property, the scaling limits of the multi-species fluctuation fields, seen in a characteristic traveling frame, solve a coupled Burgers SPDE, which is a formal spatial gradient of a coupled KPZ e…
We establish the first tight bound on the lower tail probability of the half-space KPZ equation with Neumann boundary parameter $A = -1/2$ and narrow-wedge initial data. When the tail depth is of order $T^{2/3}$, the lower bound demonstrates a crossover between a regime of super-exponential decay with exponent $\frac{5}{2}$ (and leading pre-factor $\frac{2}{15 π}T^{1/3}$) and a regime with exponent $3$ (and leading pre-factor $\frac{1}{24}$); the upper bound demonstrates a crossover between a regime with exponent $\frac{3}{2}$ (and arbitrarily small pre-factor) and a regime with exponent $3$ (…
We consider the narrow wedge solution to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang stochastic PDE under the characteristic $3:2:1$ scaling of time, space and fluctuations. We study the correlation of fluctuations at two different times. We show that when the times are close to each other, the correlation approaches one at a power-law rate with exponent $2/3$, while when the two times are remote from each other, the correlation tends to zero at a power-law rate with exponent $-1/3$. We also prove exponential-type tail bounds for differences of the solution at two space-time points. Three main tools are pivotal t…
We present a proof of an upper tail bound of the correct order (up to a constant factor in the exponent) in two classes of stationary models in the KPZ universality class. The proof is based on an exponential identity due to Rains in the case of Last Passage Percolation with exponential weights, and recently re-derived by Emrah-Jianjigian-Seppäiläinen (EJS). Our proof follows very similar lines for the two classes of models we consider, using only general monotonocity and convexity properties, and can thus be expected to apply to many other stationary models.
We review some algebraic and combinatorial structures that underlie models in the KPZ universality class.Emphasis is placed on the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence and its geometric lifting due to A.N.Kirillov. We present how these combinatorial constructions are used to analyse the structure of solvable models in the KPZ class and lead to computation of their statistics via connecting to representation theoretic objects such as Schur, Macdonald and Whittaker functions, Young tableaux and Gelfand-Tsetlin patterns. We also present how fundamental representation theoretic concepts, such a…
For stochastic growth models in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class in 1+1 dimensions, fluctuations grow as t^{1/3} during time t and the correlation length at a fixed time scales as t^{2/3}. In this note we discuss the scale of time correlations. For a representant of the KPZ class, the polynuclear growth model, we show that the space-time is non-trivially fibred, having slow directions with decorrelation exponent equal to 1 instead of the usual 2/3. These directions are the characteristic curves of the PDE associated to the surface's slope. As a consequence, previously proven results for spa…
We prove that the stochastic Burgers equation, which is related to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang/KPZ equation via weak derivative, is a "critical" scaling limit for density fluctuations for a family of non-integrable and non-stationary interacting particle systems. The models we consider cannot be linearized by a microscopic Cole-Hopf transform or studied directly by the existing energy solution theory of Goncalves-Jara '14. We develop a novel method based on comparison to stationary models, a technique that has not yet been applied to universality of the KPZ equation and nontrivially expands the se…
We consider the Cole-Hopf solution of the (1+1)-dimensional KPZ equation started from the narrow wedge initial condition. In this article, we ask how the peaks and valleys of the KPZ height function (centered by time/24) at any spatial point grow as time increases. Our first main result is about the law of iterated logarithms for the KPZ equation. As time variable $t$ goes to $\infty$, we show that the limsup of the KPZ height function with the scaling by $t^{1/3}(\log\log t)^{2/3}$ is almost surely equal to $(\frac{3}{4\sqrt{2}})^{2/3}$ whereas the liminf of the height function with the scali…
One-dimensional interacting particle systems, 1+1 random growth models, and two-dimensional directed polymers define 2d height fields. The KPZ universality conjecture posits that an appropriately scaled height function converges to a model-independent universal random field for a large class of models. We survey limit theorems for a few models and discuss changes that arise in different domains. In particular, we present recent results on periodic domains. We also comment on integrable probability models, integrable differential equations, and universality.
We prove the height functions for a class of non-integrable and non-stationary particle systems converge to the KPZ equation, thereby making progress on the universality of the KPZ equation. The models herein are ASEP [4] with a mesoscopic family of slow bonds, thus we partially extend [16] to non-stationary models and add to the almost empty set of non-integrable, non-stationary interacting particle systems for which universality is established. To do this, we develop further the strategy of [41, 42] introduce a method to establish a novel principle that builds upon the classical hydrodynamic…
Conjecture II.3.6 of Spohn in [Spohn '91] and Lecture 7 of Jensen-Yau in [Jensen-Yau '99] ask for a general derivation of universal fluctuations of hydrodynamic limits in large-scale stochastic interacting particle systems. However, the past few decades have witnessed only minimal progress according to [Goncalves-Landim-Milanes '17]. In this paper, we develop a general method for deriving the so-called Boltzmann-Gibbs principle for a general family of non-integrable and non-stationary interacting particle systems, thereby responding to Spohn and Jensen-Yau. Most importantly, our method depends…
There has been much success in describing the limiting spatial fluctuations of growth models in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class. A proper rescaling of time should introduce a non-trivial temporal dimension to these limiting fluctuations. In one-dimension, the KPZ class has the dynamical scaling exponent $z=3/2$, that means one should find a universal space-time limiting process under the scaling of time as $t\,T$, space like $t^{2/3} X$ and fluctuations like $t^{1/3}$ as $t\to\infty$. In this paper we provide evidence for this belief. We prove that under certain hypotheses, gr…
We introduce what we call the second-order Boltzmann-Gibbs principle, which allows to replace local functionals of a conservative, one-dimensional stochastic process by a possibly nonlinear function of the conserved quantity. This replacement opens the way to obtain nonlinear stochastic evolutions as the limit of the fluctuations of the conserved quantity around stationary states. As an application of this second-order Boltzmann-Gibbs principle, we introduce the notion of energy solutions of the KPZ and stochastic Burgers equations. Under minimal assumptions, we prove that the density fluctuat…
Heat flows in 1+1 dimensional stochastic environment converge after scaling to the random geometry described by the directed landscape. In this first part, we show that the O'Connell-Yor polymer and the KPZ equation converge to the KPZ fixed point. The key is that one-dimensional Baik-Ben Arous-Peche statistics characterize the KPZ fixed point. This yields a general and elementary method that shows convergence based on previously established limit theorems. Independently, at the same time and place Quastel and Sharkar gave an unrelated proof of KPZ convergence. The methods invite extensions in…
We consider a system of infinitely many interacting Brownian motions that models the height of a one-dimensional interface between two bulk phases. We prove that the large scale fluctuations of the system are well approximated by the solution to the KPZ equation provided the microscopic interaction is weakly asymmetric. The proof is based on the martingale solutions of Goncalves and Jara and the corresponding uniqueness result of Gubinelli and Perkowski.
With respect to a class of long-range exclusion processes on $\mathbb{Z}^d$, with single particle transition rates of order $|\cdot|^{-(d+α)}$, starting under Bernoulli invariant measure $ν_ρ$ with density $ρ$, we consider the fluctuation behavior of occupation times at a vertex and more general additive functionals. Part of our motivation is to investigate the dependence on $α$, $d$ and $ρ$ with respect to the variance of these functionals and associated scaling limits. In the case the rates are symmetric, among other results, we find the scaling limits exhaust a range of fractional Brownian …
We study the aging property for stationary models in the KPZ universality class. In particular, we show aging for the stationary KPZ fixed point, the Cole-Hopf solution to the stationary KPZ equation, the height function of the stationary TASEP, last-passage percolation with boundary conditions and stationary directed polymers in the intermediate disorder regime. All of these models are shown to display a universal aging behavior characterized by the rate of decay of their correlations. As a comparison, we show aging for models in the Edwards-Wilkinson universality class where a different deca…
Stochastic growth processes in dimension $(2+1)$ were conjectured by D. Wolf, on the basis of renormalization-group arguments, to fall into two distinct universality classes, according to whether the Hessian $H_ρ$ of the speed of growth $v(ρ)$ as a function of the average slope $ρ$ satisfies $\det H_ρ>0$ ("isotropic KPZ class") or $\det H_ρ\le 0$ ("anisotropic KPZ (AKPZ)" class). The former is characterized by strictly positive growth and roughness exponents, while in the AKPZ class fluctuations are logarithmic in time and space. It is natural to ask (a) if one can exhibit interesting growth m…
The competition between local Brownian roughness and global parabolic curvature experienced in many random interface models reflects an important aspect of the KPZ universality class. It may be summarised by an exponent triple $(1/2,1/3,2/3)$ representing local interface fluctuation, local roughness (or inward deviation) and convex hull facet length. The three effects arise, for example, in droplets in planar Ising models (Alexander, '01, Hammond, '11,'12). In this article, we offer a new perspective on this phenomenon. We consider directed last passage percolation model in the plane, a paradi…
The power spectrum of interface fluctuations in the $(1+1)$-dimensional Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class is studied both experimentally and numerically. The $1/f^α$-type spectrum is found and characterized through a set of "critical exponents" for the power spectrum. The recently formulated "aging Wiener-Khinchin theorem" accounts for the observed exponents. Interestingly, the $1/f^α$ spectrum in the KPZ class turns out to contain information on a universal distribution function characterizing the asymptotic state of the KPZ interfaces, namely the Baik-Rains universal variance. It …
We study a $(2+1)$-dimensional stochastic interface growth model, that is believed to belong to the so-called Anisotropic KPZ (AKPZ) universality class [Borodin and Ferrari, 2014]. It can be seen either as a two-dimensional interacting particle process with drift, that generalizes the one-dimensional Hammersley process [Aldous and Diaconis 1995, Seppalainen 1996], or as an irreversible dynamics of lozenge tilings of the plane [Borodin and Ferrari 2014, Toninelli 2015]. Our main result is a hydrodynamic limit: the interface height profile converges, after a hyperbolic scaling of space and time,…
Brownian motion is a continuum scaling limit for a wide class of random processes, and there has been great success in developing a theory for its properties (such as distribution functions or regularity) and expanding the breadth of its universality class. Over the past twenty five years a new universality class has emerged to describe a host of important physical and probabilistic models (including one dimensional interface growth processes, interacting particle systems and polymers in random environments) which display characteristic, though unusual, scalings and new statistics. This class …
This note, dedicated in Harold Widom's memory, is an expanded version of a lecture I gave in fall 2021 at the MSRI program "Universality and Integrability in Random Matrices and Interacting Particle Systems". I will focus on the behavior of the stationary measure for the open KPZ equation, a paradigmatic model for interface growth in contact with boundaries. Much of this will review elements of my joint work with A. Knizel as well as with H. Shen, as well as subsequent works of W. Bryc, A. Kuznetsov, Y. Wang, and J. Wesolowski and of G. Barraquand and P. Le Doussal. The basis for this advance …
Many models of one-dimensional local random growth are expected to lie in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class. For such a model, the interface profile at advanced time may be viewed in scaled coordinates specified via characteristic KPZ scaling exponents of one-third and two-thirds. When the long time limit of this scaled interface is taken, it is expected -- and proved for a few integrable models -- that, up to a parabolic shift, the Airy$_2$ process $\mathcal{A}:\mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ is obtained. This process may be embedded via the Robinson-Schensted-Knuth correspondence a…
