The 2025 edition of the traditional Boltzmann Lecture will be held on Thursday, February 20th, at 14:00 in Room 128-129. Professor Satya Majumdar from CNRS and Universite Paris-Sud, Orsay will give a seminar titled Stochastic Resetting.
Abstract:
This talk provides a pedagogical overview of the rapidly developing field of stochastic resetting, which is relevant in many areas involving random search processes. Stochastic resetting refers to the interruption of a system’s natural dynamics at random times, resetting it to its initial condition. This process breaks detailed balance and drives the system into a nonequilibrium stationary state. The approach to this stationary state is accompanied by an unusual dynamical phase transition. Additionally, the mean first-passage time to a fixed target reaches a minimum at an optimal resetting rate, making the diffusive search process more efficient. Recent experiments in optical traps have confirmed some theoretical predictions while also raising new questions. Beyond the classical regime, recent developments have explored quantum resetting as well. This talk aims to explain why stochastic resetting has emerged in recent years as a significant field of research in nonequilibrium statistical physics.
Satya N. Majumdar received his PhD in Physics from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1992. After postdoctoral positions at AT&T Bell Labs and Yale University, he joined the Tata Institute as faculty before becoming a CNRS scientist in 2000. Since 2004, he has been a CNRS Research Director at LPTMS, Université Paris-Saclay, and holds adjunct positions at institutions in India, Israel, and the UK. He has served on editorial boards of leading physics journals and, since 2025, has been Editor-in-Chief of J. Phys. A. He has received numerous awards, including the Paul Langevin Medal, the CNRS Silver Medal, and the European Physical Society Prize for Statistical and Nonlinear Physics. He has worked in a broad area of equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics, including sandpile models and granular materials, transport in superconductors, phase ordering dynamics in out of equilibrium systems, persistence and first-passage properties in stochastic processes, interface growth problems, extreme value statistics, search problems
in ecology and computer science, Brownian motion, active particles, random matrix theory, cold atoms and stochastic resetting.
The Boltzmann lectures are organized by the group of Statistical Physics at SISSA. Each year a distinguished guest is invited to give a talk to commemorate and celebrate the Austrian physicist on the occasion of his birthday.