The main result of this paper, Theorem 1.5, gives explicit formulae for the kernels of the ergodic decomposition measures for infinite Pickrell measures on the space of infinite complex matrices. The kernels are obtained as the scaling limits of Christoffel-Uvarov deformations of Jacobi orthogonal polynomial ensembles.

We prove the complete monotonicity on $${(0, \infty)^{n}}$$ for suitable inverse powers of the spanning-tree polynomials of graphs and, more generally, of the basis generating polynomials of certain classes of matroids. This generalizes a result of Szegő and answers, among other things, a long-standing question of Lewy and Askey concerning the positivity of Taylor coefficients for certain rational functions. Our proofs are based on two ab-initio methods for proving that $${P^{-\beta}}$$ is completely monotone on a convex cone$C$: the determinantal method and the quadratic-form method. These methods are closely connected with harmonic analysis on Euclidean Jordan algebras (or equivalently on symmetric cones). We furthermore have a variety of constructions that, given such polynomials, can create other ones with the same property: among these are algebraic analogues of the matroid operations of deletion, contraction, direct sum, parallel connection, series connection and 2-sum. The complete monotonicity of $${P^{-\beta}}$$ for some $${\beta > 0}$$ can be viewed as a strong quantitative version of the half-plane property (Hurwitz stability) for$P$, and is also related to the Rayleigh property for matroids.

We construct a conformally invariant random family of closed curves in the plane by welding of random homeomorphisms of the unit circle. The homeomorphism is constructed using the exponential of$βX$, where X is the restriction of the 2-dimensional free field on the circle and the parameter$β$is in the “high temperature” regime $$ \beta < \sqrt {2} $$ . The welding problem is solved by studying a non-uniformly elliptic Beltrami equation with a random complex dilatation. For the existence a method of Lehto is used. This requires sharp probabilistic estimates to control conformal moduli of annuli and they are proven by decomposing the free field as a sum of independent fixed scale fields and controlling the correlations of the complex dilatation restricted to dyadic cells of various scales. For the uniqueness we invoke a result by Jones and Smirnov on conformal removability of Hölder curves. Our curves are closely related to SLE($ϰ$) for$ϰ$<4.

For a compact connected set$X$⊆$ℓ$^{∞}, we define a quantity$β$′($x$,$r$) that measures how close$X$may be approximated in a ball$B$($x$,$r$) by a geodesic curve. We then show that there is$c$>0 so that if$β$′($x$,$r$)>$β$>0 for all$x$∈$X$and$r$<$r$_{0}, then $\operatorname{dim}X>1+c\beta^{2}$ . This generalizes a theorem of Bishop and Jones and answers a question posed by Bishop and Tyson.

In this paper, combining the $p$-capacity for $p\in (1, n)$ with the Orlicz addition of convex domains, we develop the $p$-capacitary Orlicz-Brunn-Minkowski theory. In particular, the Orlicz $L_{\phi}$ mixed $p$-capacity of two convex domains is introduced and its geometric interpretation is obtained by the $p$-capacitary Orlicz-Hadamard variational formula. The $p$-capacitary Orlicz-Brunn-Minkowski and Orlicz-Minkowski inequalities are established, and the equivalence of these two inequalities are discussed as well. The $p$-capacitary Orlicz-Minkowski problem is proposed and solved under some mild conditions on the involving functions and measures. In particular, we provide the solutions for the normalized $p$-capacitary $L_q$ Minkowski problems with $q>1$ for both discrete and general measures.