An invitation to the cutoff phenomenonHausdorff Colloquium

by Justin Salez (Université Paris Dauphine)

Wednesday Jun 3, 2026, 3:00 PM → 4:30 PM Europe/Berlin

Endenicher Allee 60/1-016 - Lipschitzsaal (Mathezentrum)

Abstract:

The cutoff phenomenon is an abrupt transition from out of equilibrium to equilibrium undergone by certain Markov processes in the limit where the size of the state space tends to infinity. Discovered four decades ago in the context of card shuffling, this surprising phenomenon has since then been observed in a variety of models, from random walks on groups or complex networks to Glauber dynamics for high-temperature spin systems. It is now believed to be universal among fast-mixing high-dimensional processes. Yet, current proofs are heavily model-dependent, and identifying the general conditions that trigger a cutoff remains one of the biggest challenges in the quantitative analysis of finite Markov chains. In this talk, I will provide a self-contained introduction to this fascinating question, and then describe a recent partial answer based on entropy and curvature.

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