This volume is dedicated to the memory of Harold Widom (1932–2021), an outstanding mathematician who has enriched mathematics with his ideas and ground breaking work since the 1950s until the present time.
It contains a biography of Harold Widom, personal notes written by his former students or colleagues, and also his last, previously unpublished paper on domain walls in a Heisenberg–Ising chain. Widom's most famous contributions were made to Toeplitz operators and random matrices. While his work on random matrices is part of almost all the present-day research activities in this field, his work in Toeplitz operators and matrices was done mainly before 2000 and is therefore described in a contribution devoted to his achievements in just this area.
The volume contains 18 invited and refereed research and expository papers on Toeplitz operators and random matrices. These present new results or new perspectives on topics related to Widom's work.
Part I Harold Widoms Life, Work, and Last Paper.- Biography of Harold
Widom.- Domain Walls in the Heisenberg-Ising Spin-1/2 Chain.- Harold Widoms
Contributions to the Spectral Theory and Asymptotics of Toeplitz Operators
and Matrices.- Visualizations of Two Functions Emerging in Connection with
Toeplitz Determinants.- Part II Personal Notes.- A Remarkable Advisor,
Mentor, and Friend.- My Encounters with Harold Widom.- Memories of Harold
Widom.- Personal Reflection on Harold Widom.- Part III Invited
Contributions.- Loops in SU (2) and Factorization, II.- Openness of Regular
Regimes of Complex Random Matrix Models.- Focusing Nonlocal Nonlinear
Schrödinger Equation with Asymmetric Boundary Conditions: Large-Time
Behavior.- Algebras of Commuting Differential Operators for Kernels of Airy
Type.- A Random Walk on the Rado Graph.- Widom Factors and SzegoWidom
Asymptotics, a Review.- Some Recent Progress on the Stationary Measure for
the Open KPZ Equation.- Probability of Two Large Gaps in the Bulk and at the
Edge of the Spectrum of Random Matrices.- Multiplicative Properties of
Infinite Block Toeplitz and Hankel Matrices.- Toeplitz and Related Operators
on Polyanalytic Fock Spaces.- Strong Szego Theorem on a Jordan Curve.-
Toeplitz Operators with Non-trivial Kernels and Non-dense Ranges on Weak
Hardy Spaces.- Rényi Entropies of the Free Fermi Gas in Multi-Dimensional
Space at High Temperature.- Spectral Asymptotics for Toeplitz Matrices Having
Certain Piecewise Continuous Symbols.- Global and Local Scaling Limits for
Linear Eigenvalue Statistics of Jacobi -Ensembles.- On the Limit of Some
Variable-Coefficient Toeplitz-Like Determinants.- On Diagonalizable Quantum
Weighted Hankel Matrices.- On the Product Formula for Toeplitz and Related
Operators.
Estelle Basor is professor emeritus of mathematics at the California Polytechnic State University, and deputy director of the American Institute of Mathematics. Her areas of research are in operator theory and the theory of random matrices. Albrecht Böttcher is professor at TU Chemnitz. He is an author of several books and has edited a number of recent books in the Operator Theory series. Torsten Erhardt is a professor at the UC Santa Cruz. His research interests range from functional analysis over harmonic analysis and Wiener-Hopf factorization theory to complex analysis. Craig A. Tracy is emeritus distinguished professor at UC Davis. His fields of research include statistical physics, integrable systems, and probability theory.
