This IMA Volume in ~athematics and its Applications PERCOLATION THEORY AND ERGODIC THEORY OF INFINITE PARTICLE SYSTEMS represents the proceedings of a workshop which was an integral part of the 19R4-85 IMA program on STOCHASTIC DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS We are grateful to the Scientific Committee: naniel Stroock (Chairman) Wendell Fleming Theodore Harris Pierre-Louis Lions Steven Orey George Papanicolaoo for planning and implementing an exciting and stimulating year-long program. We especially thank the Workshop Organizing Committee, Harry Kesten (Chairman), Richard Holley, and Thomas Liggett for organizing a workshop which brought together scientists and mathematicians in a variety of areas for a fruitful exchange of ideas. George R. Sell Hans Weinherger PREFACE Percolation theory and interacting particle systems both have seen an explosive growth in the last decade. These suhfields of probability theory are closely related to statistical mechanics and many of the publications on these suhjects (especially on the former) appear in physics journals, wit~ a great variahility in the level of rigour. There is a certain similarity and overlap hetween the methods used in these two areas and, not surprisingly, they tend to attract the same probabilists. It seemed a good idea to organize a workshop on "Percolation Theory and Ergodic Theory of Infinite Particle Systems" in the framework of the special probahility year at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in 1985-86. Such a workshop, dealing largely with rigorous results, was indeed held in February 1986.

Percolation theory is the study of an idealized random medium in two or more dimensions. The emphasis of this book is upon core mathematical material and the presentation of the shortest and most accessible proofs. Much new material appears in this second edition including dynamic and static renormalization, strict inequalities between critical points, a sketch of the lace expansion, and several essays on related fields and applications.

Quite apart from the fact that percolation theory had its ongm in an honest applied problem, it is a source of fascinating problems of the best kind for which a mathematician can wish: problems which are easy to state with a minimum of preparation, but whose solutions are apparently difficult and require new methods. At the same time, many of the prob lems are of interest to or proposed by statistical physicists and not dreamed up merely to demonstrate ingenuity. Much progress has been made in recent years, and many of the open problems of ten years aga have been solved. With such solutions we have seen the evolution of new techniques and questions; the consequent knowledge has shifted the ground under percolation, and it is time to examine afresh the mathematics of the subject. The quantity of literature related to percolation seems to grow hour by hour, mostly in the physics journals. It is becoming increasingly diffi cult to get to know the subject from scratch, and one of the principal purposes of this book is to remedy this. This book is about the mathematics of percolation theory, with the emphasis upon presenting the shortest rigorous proofs of the main facts.

This book, first published in 2006, is an account of percolation theory and its ramifications.

This book is representative of the work of Chinese probabilists on probability theory and its applications in physics. It presents a unique treatment of general Markov jump processes: uniqueness, various types of ergodicity, Markovian couplings, reversibility, spectral gap, etc. It also deals with a typical class of non-equilibrium particle systems, including the typical Schlögl model taken from statistical physics. The constructions, ergodicity and phase transitions for this class of Markov interacting particle systems, namely, reaction-diffusion processes, are presented. In this new edition, a large part of the text has been updated and two-and-a-half chapters have been rewritten. The book is self-contained and can be used in a course on stochastic processes for graduate students.

The 19th IUPAP International Conference on Statistical Physics is devoted to the general field of statistical physics, including traditional topics such as statistical methods concerning the static and dynamic properties of mesoscopic and macroscopic states of matter, as well as hot topics of current interest in applications of statistical physics. These include quantum chaos and turbulence, structures and patterns, fractals, neural networks, computer simulation and visualization in statistical physics, disordered systems and heterogeneous systems, simple and complex fluids.