UVic Dynamics and Probability Seminar: Jacob Richey

In this talk I will discuss activated random walk (ARW) and the stochastic sandpile (SSM), two interacting particle systems that exhibit a phase transition on infinite domains and self-organized criticality on finite domains. ARW and SSM both consist of identical particles that perform simple random walk, initially with average density μ particles per site, but they follow different local interaction rules. Depending on the value of μ, particles may eventually stop moving, or remain active forever. Current research is focused on determining where the transition between these two phenomena occurs, and many questions still remain – even on Z. I will present some recent results and discuss the novel tools involved.