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Probability and Combinatorics

Thursday, May 5, 2016 - 2:30pm

Oren Louidor

Technion, Haifa, Israel

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 3C8

We consider a continuous time random walk on the box of side length N in Z^2, whose transition rates are governed by the discrete Gaussian free field h on the box with zero boundary conditions, acting as potential: At inverse temperature \beta, when at site x the walk waits an exponential time with mean \exp(\beta h_x) and then jumps to one of its neighbors chosen uniformly at random.

This process can be used to model a diffusive particle in a random potential with logarithmic correlations or alternatively as Glauber dynamics for a spin-glass system with logarithmically correlated energy levels. We show that at any sub-critical temperature and at pre-equilibrium time scales, the walk exhibits aging. More precisely, for any heta > 0 and suitable sequence of times (t_N), the probability that the walk at time t_N(1+ heta) is within O(1) of where it was at time t_N tends to a non-trivial constant as N o infty, whose value can be expressed in terms of the distribution function of the generalized arcsine law. This puts this process in the same aging universality class as many other spin-glass models, e.g. the random energy model. Joint work with Aser Cortines-Peixoto and Adela Svejda.