Detecting a local perturbation in a continuous scenery.
Diffusions in random environment and ballistic behavior
Directed polymer in random environment and last passage percolation*
The sequence of random probability measures νn that gives a path of length n, times the sum of the random weights collected along the paths, is shown to satisfy a large deviations principle with good rate function the Legendre transform of the free energy of the associated directed polymer in a random environment. Consequences on the asymptotics of the typical number of paths whose collected weight is above a fixed proportion are then drawn.
Disorder relevance at marginality and critical point shift
Recently the renormalization group predictions on the effect of disorder on pinning models have been put on mathematical grounds. The picture is particularly complete if the disorder is relevant or irrelevant in the Harris criterion sense: the question addressed is whether quenched disorder leads to a critical behavior which is different from the one observed in the pure, i.e. annealed, system. The Harris criterion prediction is based on the sign of the specific heat exponent of the pure system,...