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Photo of Tobias Ambjörnsson

Tobias Ambjörnsson

Senior lecturer

Photo of Tobias Ambjörnsson

Severe slowing-down and universality of the dynamics in disordered interacting many-body systems: ageing and ultraslow diffusion

Author

  • Lloyd Sanders
  • Michael A. Lomholt
  • Ludvig Lizana
  • Karl Fogelmark
  • Ralf Metzler
  • Tobias Ambjörnsson

Summary, in English

Low-dimensional, many-body systems are often characterized by ultraslow dynamics. We study a labelled particle in a generic system of identical particles with hard-core interactions in a strongly disordered environment. The disorder is manifested through intermittent motion with scale-free sticking times at the single particle level. While for a non-interacting particle we find anomalous diffusion of the power-law form < x(2)(t)> similar or equal to t(alpha) of the mean squared displacement with 0 < alpha < 1, we demonstrate here that the combination of the disordered environment with the many-body interactions leads to an ultraslow, logarithmic dynamics < x(2)(t)> similar or equal to log(1/2)t with a universal 1/2 exponent. Even when a characteristic sticking time exists but the fluctuations of sticking times diverge we observe the mean squared displacement < x(2)(t)> similar or equal to t(gamma) with 0 < gamma < 1/2, that is slower than the famed Harris law < x(2)(t)> similar or equal to t(1/2) without disorder. We rationalize the results in terms of a subordination to a counting process, in which each transition is dominated by the forward waiting time of an ageing continuous time process.

Department/s

  • Computational Biology and Biological Physics - Has been reorganised

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Publication/Series

New Journal of Physics

Volume

16

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Topic

  • Biophysics
  • Other Physics Topics

Keywords

  • single-file diffusion
  • continuous time random walks
  • ageing

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1367-2630