The convergence of the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process to the solution of the Burgers equation is a classical result. In his seminal 1981 paper, Herman Rost proved the convergence of the density fields and local equilibrium when the limiting solution of the equation is a rarefaction fan. An important tool of his proof is the subadditive ergodic theorem. We prove his results by showing how second class particles transport the rarefaction-fan solution, as characteristics do for the Burgers equation, avoiding subadditivity. Along the way we show laws of large numbers for tagged particles, fluxes and second class particles, and simplify existing proofs in the shock cases. The presentation is self contained.

In this paper, we review a few known facts on the coordinate Bethe ansatz. We present a detailed construction of the Bethe ansatz vector $\psi $ and energy $\Lambda $, which satisfy $V\psi =\Lambda \psi $, where $V$ is the transfer matrix of the six-vertex model on a finite square lattice with periodic boundary conditions for weights $a=b=1$ and $c>0$. We also show that the same vector $\psi $ satisfies $H\psi =E\psi $, where $H$ is the Hamiltonian of the XXZ model (which is the model for which the Bethe ansatz was first developed), with a value $E$ computed explicitly.

Variants of this approach have become central techniques for the study of exactly solvable statistical mechanics models in both the physics and mathematics communities. Our aim in this paper is to provide a pedagogically-minded exposition of this construction, aimed at a mathematical audience. It also provides the opportunity to introduce the notation and framework which will be used in a subsequent paper by the authors [5] that amounts to proving that the random-cluster model on $\mathbb{Z}^{2}$ with cluster weight $q>4$ exhibits a first-order phase transition.

The theory of equidistribution is about hundred years old, and has been developed primarily by number theorists and theoretical computer scientists. A motivated uninitiated peer could encounter difficulties perusing the literature, due to various synonyms and polysemes used by different schools. One purpose of this note is to provide a short introduction for probabilists. We proceed by recalling a perspective originating in a work of the second author from 2002. Using it, various new examples of completely uniformly distributed $\mathsf{mod}~1$ sequences, in the “metric” (meaning almost sure stochastic) sense, can be easily exhibited. In particular, we point out natural generalizations of the original $p$-multiply equidistributed sequence $k^{p}\,t\ \mathsf{mod}~1$, $k\geq1$ (where $p\in\mathbb{N}$ and $t\in[0,1]$), due to Hermann Weyl in 1916. In passing, we also derive a Weyl-like criterion for weakly completely equidistributed (also known as WCUD) sequences, of substantial recent interest in MCMC simulations.

The translation from number theory to probability language brings into focus a version of the strong law of large numbers for weakly correlated complex-valued random variables, the study of which was initiated by Weyl in the aforementioned manuscript, followed up by Davenport, Erdős and LeVeque in 1963, and greatly extended by Russell Lyons in 1988. In this context, an application to $\infty$-distributed Koksma’s numbers $t^{k}\ \mathsf{mod}~1$, $k\geq1$ (where $t\in[1,a]$ for some $a>1$), and an important generalization by Niederreiter and Tichy from 1985 are discussed.

The paper contains negligible amount of new mathematics in the strict sense, but its perspective and open questions included in the end could be of considerable interest to probabilists and statisticians, as well as certain computer scientists and number theorists.

We consider a discrete bridge from $(0,0)$ to $(2N,0)$ evolving according to the corner growth dynamics, where the jump rates are subject to an upward asymmetry of order $N^{-\alpha}$ with $\alpha\in(0,\infty)$. We provide a classification of the asymptotic behaviours - invariant measure, hydrodynamic limit and fluctuations - of this model according to the value of the parameter $\alpha$.

This survey is an extended version of lectures given at the Cornell Probability Summer School 2013. The fundamental facts about the Abelian sandpile model on a finite graph and its connections to related models are presented. We discuss exactly computable results via Majumdar and Dhar’s method. The main ideas of Priezzhev’s computation of the height probabilities in 2D are also presented, including explicit error estimates involved in passing to the limit of the infinite lattice. We also discuss various questions arising on infinite graphs, such as convergence to a sandpile measure, and stabilizability of infinite configurations.