Philippe Biane

We study some path transformations related to Littelmann path model and their applications to representation theory and Brownian motion in a Weyl chamber.

A combinatorial approach to free probability theory has been developped by Roland Speicher, based on the notion of noncrossing cumulants, a free analogue of the classical theory of cumulants in probability theory. We review this theory, and explain the connections between free probability theory and random matrices. We relate noncrossing cumulants to classical cumulants and also to characters of large symmetric groups. Finally we give applications to the asymptotics of representations of symmetric groups, specifically to the Littlewood-Richardson rule.

We establish connections between the lattices of non-crossing partitions of type B introduced by V. Reiner, and the framework of the free probability theory of D. Voiculescu. Lattices of non-crossing partitions (of type A, up to now) have played an important role in the combinatorics of free probability, primarily via the non-crossing cumulants of R. Speicher. Here we introduce the concept of {\em non-crossing cumulant of type B;} the inspiration for its definition is found by looking at an operation of ``restricted convolution of multiplicative functions'', studied in parallel for functions on symmetric groups (in type A) and on hyperoctahedral groups (in type B). The non-crossing cumulants of type B live in an appropriate framework of ``non-commutative probability space of type B'', and are closely related to a type B analogue for the R-transform of Voiculescu (which is the free probabilistic counterpart of the Fourier transform). By starting from a condition of ``vanishing of mixed cumulants of type B'', we obtain an analogue of type B for the concept of free independence for random variables in a non-commutative probability space.

The lattice of noncrossing partitions can be embedded into the Cayley graph of the symmetric group. This allows us to rederive connections between noncrossing partitions and parking functions. We use an analogous embedding for type B non-crossing partitions in order to answer a question raised by R. Stanley on the edge labeling of the type B non-crossing partitions lattice.

This paper reviews known results which connect Riemann’s integral representations of his zeta function, involving Jacobi’s theta function and its derivatives, to some particular probability laws governing sums of independent exponential variables. These laws are related to one-dimensional Brownian motion and to higher dimensional Bessel processes. We present some characterizations of these probability laws, and some approximations of Riemann’s zeta function which are related to these laws.