UBC Math Department Colloquium: Ohad Feldheim

The Ising model, and its generalisation, the Potts model, are two classical graph-colouring models for magnetism and antiferromagnetism. Albeit their simple formulation, these models were instrumental in explaining many real-world magnetic phenomena and have found various applications in physics, biology and computer science.

While our understanding of these models as modeling magnets has been constantly improving since the early twentieth century, little progress was made in treatment of Potts antiferromagnets.

In the talk, after a historical introduction to magnets, antiferromagnets and their modeling, we will describe how application of modern combinatorial and probabilistic methods resulted in recent breakthroughs in the rigorous analysis of Potts antiferromagnets.