The talk is about a class of systems of 2d statistical mechanics, such as random tilings, noncolliding walks, log-gases and random matrix-type distributions. Specific members in this class are integrable, which means that available exact formulas allow delicate asymptotic analysis leading to the Gaussian Free Field, sine-process, Tracy-Widom distributions. Extending the results beyond the integrable cases is challenging. I will speak about a recent progress in this direction: about universal local limit theorems for a class of lozenge and domino tilings, noncolliding random walks; and about GFF-type asymptotic theorems for global fluctuations in these systems and in discrete beta log–gases.[-]

I will discuss polynomials $P_{N}$ of degree $N$ that satisfy non-Hermitian orthogonality conditions with respect to the weight $\frac{\left ( z+1 \right )^{N}\left ( z+a \right )^{N}}{z^{2N}}$ on a contour in the complex plane going around 0. These polynomials reduce to Jacobi polynomials in case a = 1 and then their zeros cluster along an open arc on the unit circle as the degree tends to infinity.
For general a, the polynomials are analyzed by a Riemann-Hilbert problem. It follows that the zeros exhibit an interesting transition for the value of a = 1/9, when the open arc closes to form a closed curve with a density that vanishes quadratically. The transition is described by a Painlevé II transcendent.
The polynomials arise in a lozenge tiling problem of a hexagon with a periodic weighting. The transition in the behavior of zeros corresponds to a tacnode in the tiling problem.
This is joint work in progress with Christophe Charlier, Maurice Duits and Jonatan Lenells and we use ideas that were developed in [2] for matrix valued orthogonal polynomials in connection with a domino tiling problem for the Aztec diamond.[-]