Departmental Colloquium
Bela Bollobas
University of Cambridge and University of Memphis
Critical Probabilities
Abstract: Percolation theory was founded by Broadbent and Hammersley in
1957, in order to model the flow of fluid in a porous medium with
randomly blocked channels. By now, the field has blossomed into a
huge area, with thousands of papers, many books, and exciting
connections to several branches of mathematics and physics.
In the talk I shall introduce and study one of the basic
parameters of percolation theory, the critical probability. I
shall sketch greatly simplified proofs of two fundamental and
classical theorems, and I shall present some recent results
obtained jointly with Oliver Riordan.
The talk should be understandable to people with a minimal
background in probability theory.
Friday April 7, 2006 at 3:15 PM in SEO 636