Related papers: Taming the Gerrymander--Statistical Physics Approa…
In a Potts-like model of $Q$ ethnic groups, we follow Schelling (1971) and Meyer-Ortmanns (2003) and simulate the formation of ethnic ghettos as well as their prevention by an increasing social temperature.
We discuss one-dimensional stochastic processes defined through the Temperley-Lieb algebra related to the Q=1 Potts model. For various boundary conditions, we formulate a conjecture relating the probability distribution which describes the…
Phase transitions are ubiquitous phenomena, exemplified by the melting of ice and spontaneous magnetization of magnetic material. In general, a phase transition is associated with a symmetry breaking of a system; occurs due to the…
We introduce a novel partial differential equations approach for addressing the problem of partisan gerrymandering. Our method is based on volume preserving curvature flow, a partial differential equation which we adapt to smooth voting…
Boundary critical phenomena are studied in the 3- State Potts model in 2 dimensions using conformal field theory, duality and renormalization group methods. A presumably complete set of boundary conditions is obtained using both fusion and…
Political districts may be drawn to favor one group or political party over another, or gerrymandered. A number of measurements have been suggested as ways to detect and prevent such behavior. These measures give concrete axes along which…
Probabilistic quantum state transformations can be characterized by the degree of state separation they provide. This, in turn, sets limits on the success rate of these transformations. We consider optimum state separation of two known pure…
We study the complexity of approximating the partition function of the $q$-state Potts model and the closely related Tutte polynomial for complex values of the underlying parameters. Apart from the classical connections with quantum…
Political actors often manipulate redistricting plans to gain electoral advantages, a process known as gerrymandering. Several states have implemented institutional reforms to address this problem, such as establishing map-drawing…
We consider a setting with agents that have preferences over alternatives and are partitioned into disjoint districts. The goal is to choose one alternative as the winner using a mechanism which first decides a representative alternative…
Switching from one electoral system to another one is frequently criticized by the opposition and is viewed as a means for the ruling party to stay in power. In particular, when the new electoral system is a parallel voting (or a…
Topological aspects of interfaces are studied by comparing quantitatively the evolving three-color patterns in three different models, such as the three-state voter, Potts and extended voter models. The statistical analysis of some…
The local purity of large many-body quantum systems can be studied by following a statistical mechanical approach based on a random matrix model. Restricting the analysis to the case of global pure states, this method proved to be…
Many democratic countries use district-based elections where there is a "seat" for each district in the governing body. In each district, the party whose candidate gets the maximum number of votes wins the corresponding seat. The result of…
Cities are systems with a large number of constituents and agents interacting with each other and can be considered as emblematic of complex systems. Modeling these systems is a real challenge and triggered the interest of many disciplines…
We consider quantum state tomography with measurement procedures of the following type: First, we subject the quantum state we aim to identify to a know time evolution for a desired period of time. Afterwards we perform a measurement with a…
We consider two symmetry metrics commonly used to analyze partisan gerrymandering: the Mean-Median Difference (MM) and Partisan Bias (PB). Our main results compare, for combinations of seats and votes achievable in districted elections, the…
Why not have a computer just draw a map? This is something you hear a lot when people talk about gerrymandering, and it's easy to think at first that this could solve redistricting altogether. But there are more than a couple problems with…
The study of complex political phenomena such as parties' polarization calls for mathematical models of political systems. In this paper, we aim at modeling the time evolution of a political system whereby various parties selfishly interact…
We investigate a variant of the two-state $q$-voter model in which agents update their states under a random external field (which points upward with probability $s$ and downward with probability $1-s$) with probability $p$ or adopt the…