Random conformal weldings (Q416846)

The authors give a construction of random plane curves based on the idea of conformal welding, defined as follows. Consider a Jordan curve \(\Gamma\) bounding a simply connected region \(\Omega\) in the plane. By Riemann's mapping theorem there are conformal maps \(f_{\pm}\) mapping the unit disk \(\mathbb D\) and its complement onto \(\Omega\) and its complement, respectively. Both maps have by Caratheodory's theorem ahomeomorphic extension to the closure. Thus the mapping \(f_+ ^{-1}\circ f_- : \mathbb T \to \mathbb T\), \(\mathbb T= \partial \mathbb D\), is well-defined. The conformal welding is the inverse operation where, given a suitable homeomorphism of the circle \( \mathbb T\), one constructs a Jordan curve of the plane. In this paper the authors consider a random scale invariant set of homeomorphisms \(h_{\omega}: \mathbb T \to \mathbb T\) and construct the welding curves. The model considered here has been proposed by the second author. The authors study stochastically self-similar random curves. They choose a homeomorphism by starting with the Gaussian random field \(X\) on \( \mathbb T\) with covariance \({\mathbb E} X(z) X(z') = - \log |z-z'|\) where \( z,z' \in \mathbb T\). The exponential of \(\beta X\) gives rise to a random measure \(\tau \) on \( \mathbb T\) formally given by \(d \tau = e^{ \beta X(z)} \, dz\). This construction depends on a real parameter \(\beta\) which has a critical role. There exists a constant \(\beta_c\) such that for \(\beta < \beta_c\) the constructed maps are Hölder continuous for a.e. \(\omega\). It is expected that for \(\beta > \beta_c\) no welding exists.