Field dynamics and its applications

Xiaoyu Chen (MIT) https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/xiaoyu-chen-mit-2026-09-22 Local to Global Principles In this talk, I will talk about field dynamics, explaining its definition and why I like it. Field dynamics is a continuous analogue of the down-up walk on a simplicial complex. It has a lot of applications in discrete sampling, including sampling from the hardcore model (i.e., independent sets) on graphs of unbounded degree, up to and at the critical point.