# Mini-course by Will Perkins “Five lectures on statistical mechanics methods in combinatorics”

November 17 - December 1, 2020
Mini-Course

# Mini-course by Will Perkins "Five lectures on statistical mechanics methods in combinatorics"

Abstract:

I will introduce some basic objects, terminology, and questions from statistical mechanics and then translate these to combinatorics to arrive at some new problems and new perspectives on old problems. Applications discussed will include extremal and enumerative problems about independent sets in graphs and problems about sphere packings in Euclidean space.

The five lectures will be:

November 17, Tue
19.00 - 20.00 (MSK)
Lecture 1
Fundamentals of statistical physics
November 20, Fri
18.00 - 19.00 (MSK)
Lecture 2
Extremal combinatorics of sparse graphs

(the first two lectures)

November 24, Tue
19.00 - 20.00 (MSK)
Lecture 3
Expansion methods and enumeration
November 27, Fri
18.00 - 19.00 (MSK)
Lecture 4
Combinatorics at low temperatures
December 1, Tue
19.00 - 20.00 (MSK)
Lecture 5
Sphere packings and kissing numbers
The mini-course will be held in zoom
Meeting ID: 857-7568-7145
Password: first 6 decimal places of $\pi$ after the decimal point

You can also write to Alexander Polyanskii (alexander.polyanskii@yandex.ru) if you want to be added to mailing list.

Everyone is invited to attend. The language of the mini-course is English. The event is aimed at master and graduate students, as well as researchers in the field of combinatorics.