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We introduce and physically motivate the following problem in geometric combinatorics, originally inspired by analysing Bell inequalities. A grasshopper lands at a random point on a planar lawn of area one. It then jumps once, a fixed distance $d$, in a random direction. What shape should the lawn be to maximise the chance that the grasshopper remains on the lawn after jumping? We show that, perhaps surprisingly, a disc shaped lawn is not optimal for any $d>0$. We investigate further by introducing a spin model whose ground state corresponds to the solution of a discrete version of the grasshopper problem. Simulated annealing and parallel tempering searches are consistent with the hypothesis that for $ d < pi^{-1/2}$ the optimal lawn resembles a cogwheel with $n$ cogs, where the integer $n$ is close to $ pi ( arcsin ( sqrt{pi} d /2 ) )^{-1}$. We find transitions to other shapes for $d gtrsim pi^{-1/2}$.
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A seminal milestone in lattice statistics is the exact solution of the enumeration of dimers on a simple-quartic net obtained by Fisher,Kasteleyn, and Temperley (FKT) in 1961. An outstanding related and yet unsolved problem is the enumeration of dimers on a net with vacant sites. Here we consider this vacant-site problem with a single vacancy occurring at certain specific sites on the boundary of a simple-quartic net. First, using a bijection between dimer and spanning tree configurations due to Temperley, Kenyon, Propp, and Wilson, we establish that the dimer generating function is independent of the location of the vacancy, and deduce a closed-form expression for the generating function. We next carry out finite-size analyses of this solution as well as that of the FKT solution. Our analyses lead to a logarithmic correction term in the large-size expansion for the vacancy problem with free boundary conditions. A concrete example exhibiting this difference is given. We also find the central charge c=-2 in the language of conformal field theory for the vacancy problem, as versus the value c=1 when there is no vacancy.
The Minor problem, namely the study of the spectrum of a principal submatrix of a Hermitian matrix taken at random on its orbit under conjugation, is revisited, with emphasis on the use of orbital integrals and on the connection with branching coefficients in the decomposition of an irreducible representation of U(n), resp. SU(n), into irreps of U(n-1), resp. SU(n-1).
In the scenario of the narrow escape problem (NEP) a particle diffuses in a finite container and eventually leaves it through a small escape window in the otherwise impermeable boundary, once it arrives to this window and over-passes an entropic barrier at the entrance to it. This generic problem is mathematically identical to that of a diffusion-mediated reaction with a partially-reactive site on the containers boundary. Considerable knowledge is available on the dependence of the mean first-reaction time (FRT) on the pertinent parameters. We here go a distinct step further and derive the full FRT distribution for the NEP. We demonstrate that typical FRTs may be orders of magnitude shorter than the mean one, thus resulting in a strong defocusing of characteristic temporal scales. We unveil the geometry-control of the typical times, emphasising the role of the initial distance to the target as a decisive parameter. A crucial finding is the further FRT defocusing due to the barrier, necessitating repeated escape or reaction attempts interspersed with bulk excursions. These results add new perspectives and offer a broad comprehension of various features of the by-now classical NEP that are relevant for numerous biological and technological systems.
We propose a mechanism for solving the `negative sign problem---the inability to assign non-negative weights to quantum Monte Carlo configurations---for a toy model consisting of a frustrated triplet of spin-$1/2$ particles interacting antiferromagnetically. The introduced technique is based on the systematic grouping of the weights of the recently developed off-diagonal series expansion of the canonical partition function [Phys. Rev. E 96, 063309 (2017)]. We show that while the examined model is easily diagonalizable, the sign problem it encounters can nonetheless be very pronounced, and we offer a systematic mechanism to resolve it. We discuss the generalization of the suggested scheme and the steps required to extend it to more general and larger spin models.
The time needed for a particle to exit a confining domain through a small window, called the narrow escape time (NET), is a limiting factor of various processes, such as some biochemical reactions in cells. Obtaining an estimate of the mean NET for a given geometric environment is therefore a requisite step to quantify the reaction rate constant of such processes, which has raised a growing interest in the last few years. In this Letter, we determine explicitly the scaling dependence of the mean NET on both the volume of the confining domain and the starting point to aperture distance. We show that this analytical approach is applicable to a very wide range of stochastic processes, including anomalous diffusion or diffusion in the presence of an external force field, which cover situations of biological relevance.
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