08w5076 Free Probability, Extensions, and Applications

Arriving Sunday, January 13 and departing Friday, January 18, 2008

Organizers: Alexandru Nica (University of Waterloo), Roland Speicher (Queen's University), Antonia Tulino (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II), Dan Voiculescu (University of California, Berkeley).

Confirmed Participants

Press Release: Free Probability, Extensions, and Applications

Information for Participants

Schedule and Abstracts (PDF file)

Workshop Files

Final Report (PDF file)

Objectives

One direction of emphasis of the proposed workshop is to bring together researchers specialized in free probability, and people who use free probability in applied problems. Up to now there there was no meeting of this size which brought these communities together. On the application side we have especially in mind electrical engineers who use random matrices and free probability to describe multiuser telecommunication systems, and people who work on the computational side of random matrices (as explained in part 2 of the overview section of the proposal). We will aim to have an overall applied participation in the order of 10 persons. Special attention will be given to having expository talks on what are the important problems for the applied people.

Another direction of emphasis will be on attempts to extend the framework of free probability (as explained in part 3 of the overview section of the proposal). Clearly, we hope that the problems arising in applications will provide new motivations and ideas for such extensions.

It has also turned out in recent years that free probability is quite attractive and promising for young people. There are a lot of interesting problems posed on a level that is accessible to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. We want to continue this trend and incorporate a few such young people in the programme of the workshop.