Fractional diffusion without disorder in two dimensions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chakraborty, Nilotpal, Heyl, Markus, Moessner, Roderich
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Chakraborty, Nilotpal
Heyl, Markus
Moessner, Roderich
author_facet Chakraborty, Nilotpal
Heyl, Markus
Moessner, Roderich
contents We analyse how simple local constraints in two dimensions lead a defect to exhibit robust, non-transient, and tunable, subdiffusion. We uncover a rich dynamical phenomenology realised in ice- and dimer-type models. On the microscopic scale the path of a single defect exhibits anomalously long retractions, amounting to dynamical caging in a continuous-time random-walk framework, culminating in an effective fractional diffusion equation. Mapping to a height field yields an effective random walk subject to an emergent (entropic) logarithmic potential, whose strength is tunable, related to the exponent of algebraic ground-state correlations. The defect's path, viewed as non-equilibrium growth process, yields a frontier of fractal dimension of $5/4$, the value for a loop-erased random walk, rather than $4/3$ for simple and self-avoiding random walks. Such frustration/constraint-induced subdiffusion is expected to be relevant to platforms such as artificial spin ice and quantum simulators aiming to realize discrete link models and emergent gauge theories.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_00074
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fractional diffusion without disorder in two dimensions
Chakraborty, Nilotpal
Heyl, Markus
Moessner, Roderich
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
We analyse how simple local constraints in two dimensions lead a defect to exhibit robust, non-transient, and tunable, subdiffusion. We uncover a rich dynamical phenomenology realised in ice- and dimer-type models. On the microscopic scale the path of a single defect exhibits anomalously long retractions, amounting to dynamical caging in a continuous-time random-walk framework, culminating in an effective fractional diffusion equation. Mapping to a height field yields an effective random walk subject to an emergent (entropic) logarithmic potential, whose strength is tunable, related to the exponent of algebraic ground-state correlations. The defect's path, viewed as non-equilibrium growth process, yields a frontier of fractal dimension of $5/4$, the value for a loop-erased random walk, rather than $4/3$ for simple and self-avoiding random walks. Such frustration/constraint-induced subdiffusion is expected to be relevant to platforms such as artificial spin ice and quantum simulators aiming to realize discrete link models and emergent gauge theories.
title Fractional diffusion without disorder in two dimensions
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00074