Talk from Archives

Extremes of 'typical' functions on a sphere, random matrices and complexity of spin glasses

29.10.2012

How many local maxima, or critical points, has a 'typical' random function on a high-dimensional sphere? We explain that this question is closely related, via the Kac-Rice formula, to the study of the spectrum of large random matrices. Our results give first qualitative description of the energy landscape of certain disordered physical systems, so called spin glasses.