No Arabic abstract
Recent experimental findings on anomalous diffusion have demanded novel models that combine annealed (temporal) and quenched (spatial or static) disorder mechanisms. The comb-model is a simplified description of diffusion on percolation clusters, where the comb-like structure mimics quenched disorder mechanisms and yields a subdiffusive regime. Here we extend the comb-model to simultaneously account for quenched and annealed disorder mechanisms. To do so, we replace usual derivatives in the comb diffusion equation by different fractional time-derivative operators and the conventional comb-like structure by a generalized fractal structure. Our hybrid comb-models thus represent a diffusion where different comb-like structures describe different quenched disorder mechanisms, and the fractional operators account for various annealed disorders mechanisms. We find exact solutions for the diffusion propagator and mean square displacement in terms of different memory kernels used for defining the fractional operators. Among other findings, we show that these models describe crossovers from subdiffusion to Brownian or confined diffusions, situations emerging in empirical results. These results reveal the critical role of interactions between geometrical restrictions and memory effects on modeling anomalous diffusion.
We study the equilibrium properties of an Ising model on a disordered random network where the disorder can be quenched or annealed. The network consists of four-fold coordinated sites connected via variable length one-dimensional chains. Our emphasis is on nonuniversal properties and we consider the transition temperature and other equilibrium thermodynamic properties, including those associated with one dimensional fluctuations arising from the chains. We use analytic methods in the annealed case, and a Monte Carlo simulation for the quenched disorder. Our objective is to study the difference between quenched and annealed results with a broad random distribution of interaction parameters. The former represents a situation where the time scale associated with the randomness is very long and the corresponding degrees of freedom can be viewed as frozen, while the annealed case models the situation where this is not so. We find that the transition temperature and the entropy associated with one dimensional fluctuations are always higher for quenched disorder than in the annealed case. These differences increase with the strength of the disorder up to a saturating value. We discuss our results in connection to physical systems where a broad distribution of interaction strengths is present.
We study equilibrium properties of catalytically-activated $A + A to oslash$ reactions taking place on a lattice of adsorption sites. The particles undergo continuous exchanges with a reservoir maintained at a constant chemical potential $mu$ and react when they appear at the neighbouring sites, provided that some reactive conditions are fulfilled. We model the latter in two different ways: In the Model I some fraction $p$ of the {em bonds} connecting neighbouring sites possesses special catalytic properties such that any two $A$s appearing on the sites connected by such a bond instantaneously react and desorb. In the Model II some fraction $p$ of the adsorption {em sites} possesses such properties and neighbouring particles react if at least one of them resides on a catalytic site. For the case of textit{annealed} disorder in the distribution of the catalyst, which is tantamount to the situation when the reaction may take place at any point on the lattice but happens with a finite probability $p$, we provide an exact solution for both models for the interior of an infinitely large Cayley tree - the so-called Bethe lattice. We show that both models exhibit a rich critical behaviour: For the annealed Model I it is characterised by a transition into an ordered state and a re-entrant transition into a disordered phase, which both are continuous. For the annealed Model II, which represents a rather exotic model of statistical mechanics in which interactions of any particle with its environment have a peculiar Boolean form, the transition to an ordered state is always continuous, while the re-entrant transition into the disordered phase may be either continuous or discontinuous, depending on the value of $p$.
The effect of quenched (frozen) disorder on the collective motion of active particles is analyzed. We find that active polar systems are far more robust against quenched disorder than equilibrium ferromagnets. Long ranged order (a non-zero average velocity $langle{bf v}rangle$) persists in the presence of quenched disorder even in spatial dimensions $d=3$; in $d=2$, quasi-long-ranged order (i.e., spatial velocity correlations that decay as a power law with distance) occurs. In equilibrium systems, only quasi-long-ranged order in $d=3$ and short ranged order in $d=2$ are possible. Our theoretical predictions for two dimensions are borne out by simulations.
We present an extensive analysis of transport properties in superdiffusive two dimensional quenched random media, obtained by packing disks with radii distributed according to a Levy law. We consider transport and scaling properties in samples packed with two different procedures, at fixed filling fraction and at self-similar packing, and we clarify the role of the two procedures in the superdiffusive effects. Using the behavior of the filling fraction in finite size systems as the main geometrical parameter, we define an effective Levy exponents that correctly estimate the finite size effects. The effective Levy exponent rules the dynamical scaling of the main transport properties and identify the region where superdiffusive effects can be detected.
We consider the isotropic-to-nematic transition in liquid crystals confined to aerogel hosts, and assume that the aerogel acts as a random field. We generally find that self-averaging is violated. For a bulk transition that is weakly first-order, the violation of self-averaging is so severe, even the correlation length becomes non-self-averaging: no phase transition remains in this case. For a bulk transition that is more strongly first-order, the violation of self-averaging is milder, and a phase transition is observed.