This 49th volume offers a good sample of the main streams of current research on probability and stochastic processes, in particular those active in France. This includes articles on latest developments on diffusion processes, large deviations, martingale theory, quasi-stationary distribution, random matrices, and many more. All the contributions come from spontaneous submissions and their diversity illustrates the good health of this branch of mathematics. The featured contributors are E. Boissard, F. Bouguet, J. Brossard, M. Capitaine, P. Cattiaux, N. Champagnat, K. Abdoulaye Coulibaly-Pasquier, H. Elad Altman, A. Guillin, P. Kratz, A. Lejay, C. Leuridan, P. McGill, L. Miclo, G. Pages, E. Pardoux, P. Petit, B. Rajeev, L. Serlet, H. Tsukada, D. Villeomannais and B. Wilbertz.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Marc Yor, who passed away in 2014. The invited contributions by his collaborators and former students bear testament to the value and diversity of his work and of his research focus, which covered broad areas of probability theory. The volume also provides personal recollections about him, and an article on his essential role concerning the Doeblin documents. With contributions by P. Salminen, J-Y. Yen & M. Yor; J. Warren; T. Funaki; J. Pitman& W. Tang; J-F. Le Gall; L. Alili, P. Graczyk & T. Zak; K. Yano & Y. Yano; D. Bakry & O. Zribi; A. Aksamit, T. Choulli & M. Jeanblanc; J. Pitman; J. Obloj, P. Spoida & N. Touzi; P. Biane; J. Najnudel; P. Fitzsimmons, Y. Le Jan & J. Rosen; L.C.G. Rogers & M. Duembgen; E. Azmoodeh, G. Peccati & G. Poly, timP-L Meliot, A. Nikeghbali; P. Baldi; N. Demni, A. Rouault & M. Zani; N. O'Connell; N. Ikeda & H. Matsumoto; A. Comtet & Y. Tourigny; P. Bougerol; L. Chaumont; L. Devroye & G. Letac; D. Stroock and M. Emery.

The series of advanced courses initiated in Seminaire de Probabilites XXXIII continues with a course by Ivan Nourdin on Gaussian approximations using Malliavin calculus. The Seminaire also occasionally publishes a series of contributions on a unifying subject; in this spirit, selected participants to the September 2011 Conference on Stochastic Filtrations, held in Strasbourg and organized by Michel Emery, have also contributed to the present volume. The rest of the work covers a wide range of topics, such as stochastic calculus and Markov processes, random matrices and free probability, and combinatorial optimization.

As usual, some of the contributions to this 44th Seminaire de Probabilites were presented during the Journees de Probabilites held in Dijon in June 2010. The remainder were spontaneous submissions or were solicited by the editors. The traditional and historical themes of the Seminaire are covered, such as stochastic calculus, local times and excursions, and martingales. Some subjects already touched on in the previous volumes are still here: free probability, rough paths, limit theorems for general processes (here fractional Brownian motion and polymers), and large deviations.
Lastly, this volume explores new topics, including variable length Markov chains and peacocks. We hope that the whole volume is a good sample of the main streams of current research on probability and stochastic processes, in particular those active in France.

This is a new volume of the Seminaire de Probabilites which is now in its 43rd year. Following the tradition, this volume contains about 20 original research and survey articles on topics related to stochastic analysis. It contains an advanced course of J. Picard on the representation formulae for fractional Brownian motion. The regular chapters cover a wide range of themes, such as stochastic calculus and stochastic differential equations, stochastic differential geometry, filtrations, analysis on Wiener space, random matrices and free probability, as well as mathematical finance. Some of the contributions were presented at the Journees de Probabilites held in Poitiers in June 2009.

Nine volumes ago, in S eminaire de Probabilit es XXXIII, a series of advanced courses was started; nine such courses have appeared since. Two of them are due to Antoine Lejay, including his Introduction to rough paths in v- umeXXXVII. Thisunrepentantrecidivistnowstrikesagain, withYetanother introduction to rough paths, which sheds a more algebraic light on the same matter. The various contributions which constitute the rest of the volume ex- plify the r ole the S eminaire intends to play on the probabilistic stage: junior authors go side by side with older contributors, with a predominance from French or francophile ones; short notes mix with real research articles; and the themes are well in the traditional spirit of the S eminaire, ranging over the broad spectrum of interest of the readership of the S eminaire. Catherine Donati-Martin, Michel Emery, Alain Rouault, Christophe Stricker vii Contents Yet Another Introduction to Rough Paths Antoine Lejay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Monotonicity of the Extremal Functions for One-dimensional Inequalities of Logarithmic Sobolev Type Laurent Miclo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Non-monotone Convergence in the Quadratic Wasserstein Distance Walter Schachermayer, Uwe Schmock, and Josef Teichmann. . . . . . . . . . 131 On the Equation ? =S t t Fangjun Xu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Shabat Polynomials and Harmonic Measure Philippe Biane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Radial Dunkl Processes Associated with Dihedral Systems Nizar Demni. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Matrix Valued Brownian Motion and a Paper by P olya Philippe Biane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 On the Laws of First Hitting Times of Points for One-dimensional Symmetric Stable L evy Processes Kouji Yano, Yuko Yano, and Marc Yor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ."

Stochastic processes are as usual the main subject of the Seminaire, with contributions on Brownian motion (fractional or other), Levy processes, martingales and probabilistic finance. Other probabilistic themes are also present: large random matrices, statistical mechanics. The contributions in this volume provide a sampling of recent results on these topics. All contributions with the exception of two are written in English language.

Who could have predicted that the S eminaire de Probabilit es would reach the age of 40? This long life is ?rst due to the vitality of the French probabil- tic school, for which the S eminaire remains one of the most speci?c media of exchange. Another factor is the amount of enthusiasm, energy and time invested year after year by the R edacteurs: Michel Ledoux dedicated himself tothistaskuptoVolumeXXXVIII,andMarcYormadehisnameinseparable from the S eminaire by devoting himself to it during a quarter of a century. Browsing among the past volumes can only give a faint glimpse of how much is owed to them; keeping up with the standard they have set is a challenge to the new R edaction. In a changing world where the status of paper and ink is questioned and where, alas, pressure for publishing is increasing, in particular among young mathematicians, we shall try and keep the same direction. Although most contributions are anonymously refereed, the S eminaire is not a mathema- cal journal; our ?rst criterion is not mathematical depth, but usefulness to the French and international probabilistic community. We do not insist that everything published in these volumes should have reached its ?nal form or be original, and acceptance-rejection may not be decided on purely scienti?c grounds.

This volume presents a selection of texts that reflects the current research streams in probability, with an interest toward topics such as filtrations, Markov processes and Markov chains as well as large deviations, Stochastic Partial Differential equations, rough paths theory, quantum probabilities and percolation on graphs. The featured contributors are R. L. Karandikar and B. V. Rao, C. Leuridan, M. Vidmar, L. Miclo and P. Patie, A. Bernou, M.-E. Caballero and A. Rouault, J. Dedecker, F. Merlevede and E. Rio, F. Brosset, T. Klein, A. Lagnoux and P. Petit, C. Marinelli and L. Scarpa, C. Castaing, N. Marie and P. Raynaud de Fitte, S. Attal, J. Deschamps and C. Pellegrini, and N. Eisenbaum.

This milestone 50th volume of the "Seminaire de Probabilites" pays tribute with a series of memorial texts to one of its former editors, Jacques Azema, who passed away in January. The founders of the "Seminaire de Strasbourg", which included Jacques Azema, probably had no idea of the possible longevity and success of the process they initiated in 1967. Continuing in this long tradition, this volume contains contributions on state-of-art research on Brownian filtrations, stochastic differential equations and their applications, regularity structures, quantum diffusion, interlacing diffusions, mod-O convergence, Markov soup, stochastic billiards and other current streams of research.

In addition to its further exploration of the subject of peacocks, introduced in recent Seminaires de Probabilites, this volume continues the series' focus on current research themes in traditional topics such as stochastic calculus, filtrations and random matrices. Also included are some particularly interesting articles involving harmonic measures, random fields and loop soups. The featured contributors are Mathias Beiglboeck, Martin Huesmann and Florian Stebegg, Nicolas Juillet, Gilles Pags, Dai Taguchi, Alexis Devulder, Matyas Barczy and Peter Kern, I. Bailleul, Jurgen Angst and Camille Tardif, Nicolas Privault, Anita Behme, Alexander Lindner and Makoto Maejima, Cedric Lecouvey and Kilian Raschel, Christophe Profeta and Thomas Simon, O. Khorunzhiy and Songzi Li, Franck Maunoury, Stephane Laurent, Anna Aksamit and Libo Li, David Applebaum, and Wendelin Werner.

Providing a broad overview of the current state of the art in probability theory and its applications, and featuring an article coauthored by Mark Yor, this volume contains contributions on branching processes, Levy processes, random walks and martingales and their connection with, among other topics, rough paths, semi-groups, heat kernel asymptotics and mathematical finance.