Ulm 2004 – scientific programme

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PV: Plenarvorträge

PV VII

PV VII: Plenary Talk

Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 11:30–12:30, H22

Towards the Quantum Brownian Motion — •László Erdős — Universität München

The mystery of the erratic motion of pollen grains suspended in water, named after its explorer, Robert Brown, was solved by Einstein in his miraculous year of 1905. His kinetic theory, based upon light water molecules continuously bombarding the heavy pollen, provide not just an explanation of diffusion from the Newtonian mechanics, but also the most direct evidence yet for the existence of atoms and molecules. Since the discovery of quantum mechanics it has been a major challenge to verify the emergence of diffusion from the Schrödinger equation. In this talk I will report on a mathematically rigorous derivation of a diffusion equation as a long time scaling limit of a random Schrödinger equation in a weak, uncorrelated disorder potential This is a joint work with M. Salmhofer and H.T. Yau.