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We consider the problem of the random fluctuations in the solutions to elliptic PDEs with highly oscillatory random coefficients. In our setting, as the correlation length of the fluctuations tends to zero, the heterogeneous solution converges to a deterministic solution obtained by averaging. When the Green’s function to the unperturbed operator is sufficiently singular (i.e., not square integrable locally), the leading corrector to the averaged solution may be either deterministic or random, or both in a sense we shall explain. Our main application is the solution of an elliptic problem with random Robin boundary condition that may be used to model diffusion of signaling molecules through a layer of cells into a bulk of extracellular medium. The problem is then described by an elliptic pseudo-differential operator (a Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator) on the boundary of the domain with random potential. In the physical setting of a three dimensional extracellular medium on top of a two-dimensional surface of cells forming a layer of epithelium, we show that the approximate corrector to averaging consists of a deterministic correction plus a Gaussian field of amplitude proportional to the correlation length of the random medium. The result is obtained under some assumptions on the four-point correlation function in the medium. We provide examples of such random media based on Gaussian and Poisson statistics.

We consider the Ising model at its critical temperature with external magnetic field ha15/8 on the square lattice with lattice spacing a. We show that the truncated two-point function in this model decays exponentially with a rate independent of a as a ↓ 0. As a consequence, we show exponential decay in the near-critical scaling limit Euclidean magnetization field. For the lattice model with a = 1, the mass (inverse correlation length) is of order h8/15 as h ↓ 0; for the Euclidean field, it equals exactly Ch8/15 for some C. Although there has been much progress in the study of critical scaling limits, results on near-critical models are far fewer due to the lack of conformal invariance away from the critical point. Our arguments combine lattice and continuum FK representations, including coupled conformal loop and measure ensembles, showing that such ensembles can be useful even in the study of near-critical scaling limits. Thus we provide the first substantial application of measure ensembles.

Via a Dirichlet form extension theorem and making full use of two-sided heat kernel estimates, we establish quenched invariance principles for ran- dom walks in random environments with a boundary. In particular, we prove that the random walk on a supercritical percolation cluster or among random conductances bounded uniformly from below in a half-space, quarter-space, etc., converges when rescaled diffusively to a reflecting Brownian motion, which has been one of the important open problems in this area. We establish a similar result for the random conductance model in a box, which allows us to improve existing asymptotic estimates for the relevant mixing time. Furthermore, in the uniformly elliptic case, we present quenched invariance prin- ciples for domains with more general boundaries.

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