In this talk we consider a system of repelling small and large (hard) spheres in a continuous medium. This could describe colloidal particles (large spheres) within a substrate (small spheres). Alternatively, it could provide an idealized picture of what may happen in a phase transition when the new phase is getting formed (large spheres) but we still have small isolated particles (small spheres). One interesting phenomenon is that despite the repulsive forces between all particles, when we look at the effective system of only big spheres, an attractive force emerges between them which is usually referred to as "depletion attraction". The question we address in this talk is how to compute the free energy of the system, in particular for the renormalized one, i.e., when we first integrate over the small spheres. We will discuss a sufficient condition for the convergence of the related cluster expansion, which involves the surface of the large spheres rather than their volume (as it would have been the case in a direct application of existing methods to the binary system). This is based on joint works with Sabine Jansen, Giuseppe Scola and Xuan Nguyen.

Reaction-diffusion equations arise naturally when modelling multi-component systems of interacting populations. These equations are widely employed to describe pattern formation phenomena across various biological, chemical and physical processes. The kinetic theory of statical mechanics provides a powerful framework to describe different types of interactions at multiple spatial or temporal scales. Through appropriate hydrodynamic limits of the kinetic systems, macroscopic equations can be derived, describing observable quantities and explaining how macroscopic phenomena emerge from the underlying microscopic dynamics. In this talk, I will apply these tools to study the evolution and interactions of competing bacterial populations on a leaf surface. Specifically, I will consider self and cross diffusion effects and investigate Turing instability properties leading to the formation and persistence of stationary spatial patterns.

This work is a collaboration with D. Cusseddu (University of Minho), M. Bisi and R. Travaglini (University of Parma, Italy).

We present a random interface model on the one-dimensional torus of size $N$ with a weak perturbation, i.e. an asymmetry $\sim N^{-\gamma}$ of the direction of growth that switches from up to down based on the sign of the area underneath. The evolution of the interface can be studied in terms of the density field of an underlying, non-Markovian exclusion process. We compute the order of the correlation functions of this process for the invariant measure of the interface model, and investigate the stationary fluctuations of the density field: we establish the convergence to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck equation for $\gamma>\frac{8}{9}$, and discuss the limit for $\frac{1}{2}\leq \gamma<\frac{8}{9}$. Based on joint work with Martin Hairer and Patrícia Gonçalves.

In this talk, I am going to present a generalization of the Porous Media Model (PMM) analogue of the Bernstein polynomial basis, in the context of gradient models. The PMM is a symmetric nearest-neighbour process associated with the Porous Media Equation, and the corresponding dynamics are kinetically constrained, in the sense that particles diffuse in the lattice under a set of conditions on local configurations. While in the PMM, the occupation values of two neighbouring sites are exchanged only if there are "enough" groups of particles around them, our generalized model describes a system where, at very low densities, there is no interaction, while at high densities, there is no space for movement. I am going to present the construction of the model and its main properties, and, if time permits, discuss its extension in a long-range interaction context.

We derive the general structure for returning to the steady macroscopic nonequilibrium condition, assuming a first-order relaxation equation obtained as zero-cost flow for the Lagrangian governing the dynamical fluctuations. The main ingredient is local detailed balance from which a canonical form of the time-symmetric fluctuation contribution (aka frenesy) can be obtained. That determines the macroscopic evolution. As a consequence, the linear response around stationary nonequilibrium gets connected with the small dynamical fluctuations, leading to fluctuation-response relations. Those results may be viewed as nonequilibrium extension of the well-known structure where the relaxation to equilibrium is characterized by a (dissipative) gradient flow on top of a Hamiltonian motion.