The author describes the current state of the art in the theory of invariant random fields. This theory is based on several different areas of mathematics, including probability theory, differential geometry, harmonic analysis, and special functions. The present volume unifies many results scattered throughout the mathematical, physical, and engineering literature, as well as it introduces new results from this area first proved by the author. The book also presents many practical applications, in particular in such highly interesting areas as approximation theory, cosmology and earthquake engineering. It is intended for researchers and specialists working in the fields of stochastic processes, statistics, functional analysis, astronomy, and engineering.

The author describes the current state of the art in the theory of invariant random fields. This theory is based on several different areas of mathematics, including probability theory, differential geometry, harmonic analysis, and special functions. The present volume unifies many results scattered throughout the mathematical, physical, and engineering literature, as well as it introduces new results from this area first proved by the author. The book also presents many practical applications, in particular in such highly interesting areas as approximation theory, cosmology and earthquake engineering. It is intended for researchers and specialists working in the fields of stochastic processes, statistics, functional analysis, astronomy, and engineering.

Presents a complete description of homogenous and isotropic tensor-valued random fields, including the problems of continuum physics, mathematical tools and applications.

Probability theory on compact Lie groups deals with the interaction between “chance” and “symmetry,” a beautiful area of mathematics of great interest in its own sake but which is now also finding increasing applications in statistics and engineering (particularly with respect to signal processing). The author gives a comprehensive introduction to some of the principle areas of study, with an emphasis on applicability. The most important topics presented are: the study of measures via the non-commutative Fourier transform, existence and regularity of densities, properties of random walks and convolution semigroups of measures and the statistical problem of deconvolution. The emphasis on compact (rather than general) Lie groups helps readers to get acquainted with what is widely seen as a difficult field but which is also justified by the wealth of interesting results at this level and the importance of these groups for applications. The book is primarily aimed at researchers working in probability, stochastic analysis and harmonic analysis on groups. It will also be of interest to mathematicians working in Lie theory and physicists, statisticians and engineers who are working on related applications. A background in first year graduate level measure theoretic probability and functional analysis is essential; a background in Lie groups and representation theory is certainly helpful but the first two chapters also offer orientation in these subjects.

Combining research methods from various areas of mathematics and physics, Probabilistic Models of Cosmic Backgrounds describes the isotropic random sections of certain fibre bundles and their applications to creating rigorous mathematical models of both discovered and hypothetical cosmic backgrounds. Previously scattered and hard-to-find mathematical and physical theories have been assembled from numerous textbooks, monographs, and research papers, and explained from different or even unexpected points of view. This consists of both classical and newly discovered results necessary for understanding a sophisticated problem of modelling cosmic backgrounds. The book contains a comprehensive description of mathematical and physical aspects of cosmic backgrounds with a clear focus on examples and explicit calculations. Its reader will bridge the gap of misunderstanding between the specialists in various theoretical and applied areas who speak different scientific languages. The audience of the book consists of scholars, students, and professional researchers. A scholar will find basic material for starting their own research. A student will use the book as supplementary material for various courses and modules. A professional mathematician will find a description of several physical phenomena at the rigorous mathematical level. A professional physicist will discover mathematical foundations for well-known physical theories.

In addition to its further exploration of the subject of peacocks, introduced in recent Séminaires de Probabilités, this volume continues the series’ focus on current research themes in traditional topics such as stochastic calculus, filtrations and random matrices. Also included are some particularly interesting articles involving harmonic measures, random fields and loop soups. The featured contributors are Mathias Beiglböck, Martin Huesmann and Florian Stebegg, Nicolas Juillet, Gilles Pags, Dai Taguchi, Alexis Devulder, Mátyás Barczy and Peter Kern, I. Bailleul, Jürgen Angst and Camille Tardif, Nicolas Privault, Anita Behme, Alexander Lindner and Makoto Maejima, Cédric Lecouvey and Kilian Raschel, Christophe Profeta and Thomas Simon, O. Khorunzhiy and Songzi Li, Franck Maunoury, Stéphane Laurent, Anna Aksamit and Libo Li, David Applebaum, and Wendelin Werner.

The book presents a series of concise papers by researchers specialized in various fields of continuum and computational mechanics and of material science. The focus is on principles and strategies for multiscale modeling and simulation of complex heterogeneous materials, with periodic or random microstructure, subjected to various types of mechanical, thermal, chemical loadings and environmental effects. A wide overview of complex behavior of materials (plasticity, damage, fracture, growth, etc.) is provided. Among various approaches, attention is given to advanced non-classical continua modeling which, provided by constitutive characterization for the internal and external actions (in particular boundary conditions), is a very powerful frame for the gross mechanical description of complex material behaviors, able to circumvent the restrictions of classical coarse–graining multiscale approaches.

This volume is devoted to generalizations of the classical Birkhoff and von Neuman ergodic theorems to semigroup representations in Banach spaces, semigroup actions in measure spaces, homogeneous random fields and random measures on homogeneous spaces. The ergodicity, mixing and quasimixing of semigroup actions and homogeneous random fields are considered as well. In particular homogeneous spaces, on which all homogeneous random fields are quasimixing are introduced and studied (the n-dimensional Euclidean and Lobachevsky spaces with n>=2, and all simple Lie groups with finite centre are examples of such spaces. Also dealt with are applications of general ergodic theorems for the construction of specific informational and thermodynamical characteristics of homogeneous random fields on amenable groups and for proving general versions of the McMillan, Breiman and Lee-Yang theorems. A variational principle which characterizes the Gibbsian homogeneous random fields in terms of the specific free energy is also proved. The book has eight chapters, a number of appendices and a substantial list of references. For researchers whose works involves probability theory, ergodic theory, harmonic analysis, measure theory and statistical Physics.

Probability and Statistics theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme with contributions from distinguished experts in the field, discusses Probability and Statistics. Probability is a standard mathematical concept to describe stochastic uncertainty. Probability and Statistics can be considered as the two sides of a coin. They consist of methods for modeling uncertainty and measuring real phenomena. Today many important political, health, and economic decisions are based on statistics. This theme is structured in five main topics: Probability and Statistics; Probability Theory; Stochastic Processes and Random Fields; Probabilistic Models and Methods; Foundations of Statistics, which are then expanded into multiple subtopics, each as a chapter. These three volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, managers, and decision makers and NGOs