ICTS

Course description

This course deals with systems in which the presence of impurities or amorphous structures (in other words, of disorder) influences radically the physics, generating novel phenomena. These phenomena involve the properties of the system at equilibrium (freezing transitions, glassy phase and glassy system), as well as their dynamical evolution out-of-equilibrium (pinning, avalanches).

• The simplest spin-glass: solution of the Random Energy Model.
• Interface growth and Directed polymers in random media.
• Scenarios for the glass transition: the glass transition for directed polymers in d>2.
• Depinning and avalanches.
• Bienaymé-Galton-Watson processes.

Lectures and tutorials

Disorder and Random Energy Model	Extreme value statistics
Interfaces and Directed Polymer	Directed Polymer