CMI Seminar

In this talk I will introduce the hard-core model with Metropolis transition probabilities on finite graphs and its multi-state generalization. Motivated by the study of random-access networks performance, I will focus on the low-temperature regime and study the asymptotic behavior of these interacting particle systems by looking at first hitting times between stable states and mixing times. In particular, I will show how the order-of-magnitude of these hitting and mixing times depends on the underlying graph structure and derive precise asymptotics for various regular lattices. These results have been obtained extending the so-called "pathwise approach" developed in the statistical physics literature to study metastability phenomena and yielded a rigorous understanding of the root cause for poor delay performance of random-access networks.