All the papers included in this volume are original research papers. They represent an important part of the work of French probabilists and colleagues with whom they are in close contact throughout the world. The main topics of the papers are martingale and Markov processes studies.

The 31 papers collected here present original research results obtained in 1995-96, on Brownian motion and, more generally, diffusion processes, martingales, Wiener spaces, polymer measures.

This volume contains 19 contributions to various subjects in the theory of (commutative and non-commutative) stochastic processes. It also provides a 145-page graduate course on branching and interacting particle systems, with applications to non-linear filtering, by P. del Moral and L. Miclo.

Annotation. Researchers and graduate students in the theory of stochastic processes will find in this 35th volume some thirty articles on martingale theory, martingales and finance, analytical inequalities and semigroups, stochastic differential equations, functionals of Brownian motion and of Lévy processes. Ledoux's article contains a self-contained introduction to the use of semigroups in spectral gaps and logarithmic Sobolev inequalities; the contribution by Emery and Schachermayer includes an exposition for probabilists of Vershik's theory of backward discrete filtrations.

Stochastic processes are as usual the main subject of the Séminaire, with contributions on Brownian motion (fractional or other), Lévy processes, martingales and probabilistic finance. Other probabilistic themes are also present: large random matrices, statistical mechanics. The contributions in this volume provide a sampling of recent results on these topics. All contributions with the exception of two are written in English language.

The 36th Sminaire de Probabilits contains an advanced course on Logarithmic Sobolev Inequalities by A. Guionnet and B. Zegarlinski, as well as two shorter surveys by L. Pastur and N. O'Connell on the theory of random matrices and their links with stochastic processes. The main themes of the other contributions are Logarithmic Sobolev Inequalities, Stochastic Calculus, Martingale Theory and Filtrations. Besides the traditional readership of the Sminaires, this volume will be useful to researchers in statistical mechanics and mathematical finance.

All the papers in the volume are original research papers, discussing fundamental properties of stochastic processes. The topics under study (martingales, filtrations, path properties, etc.) represent an important part of the current research performed in 1996-97 by various groups of probabilists in France and abroad.

This volume presents a selection of texts that reflects the current research streams in probability, with an interest toward topics such as filtrations, Markov processes and Markov chains as well as large deviations, Stochastic Partial Differential equations, rough paths theory, quantum probabilities and percolation on graphs. The featured contributors are R. L. Karandikar and B. V. Rao, C. Leuridan, M. Vidmar, L. Miclo and P. Patie, A. Bernou, M.-E. Caballero and A. Rouault, J. Dedecker, F. Merlevède and E. Rio, F. Brosset, T. Klein, A. Lagnoux and P. Petit, C. Marinelli and L. Scarpa, C. Castaing, N. Marie and P. Raynaud de Fitte, S. Attal, J. Deschamps and C. Pellegrini, and N. Eisenbaum.

The 37th Séminaire de Probabilités contains A. Lejay's advanced course which is a pedagogical introduction to works by T. Lyons and others on stochastic integrals and SDEs driven by deterministic rough paths. The rest of the volume consists of various articles on topics familiar to regular readers of the Séminaires, including Brownian motion, random environment or scenery, PDEs and SDEs, random matrices and financial random processes.