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Probability and Combinatorics

Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - 3:30pm

Chris Janjigian

Purdue University

Location

Temple University

Wachman Hall 617

The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation on the real line is well-known to have stationary distributions modulo additive constants given by Brownian motion with drift. In this talk, we will discuss some results-in-progress which show that these distributions are totally ergodic and present some progress toward the conjecture that these are the only ergodic stationary distributions of the KPZ equation. The talk will discuss our coupling of Hopf-Cole solutions, which enables us to study the KPZ equation started from any measurable function valued initial condition. Through this coupling, we give a sharp characterization of when such solutions explode, show that all non-explosive functions become instantaneously continuous, and then study the problem of ergodicity on a natural topology on the space of non-explosive continuous functions (mod constants) in which the equation defines a Feller process. We show that any ergodic stationary distribution on this space is either a Brownian motion with drift or a process of a very peculiar form which will be described in the talk. 
Based on joint works with Tom Alberts, Firas Rassoul-Agha, and Timo Seppäläinen.