Diffusion with stochastic resetting at power-law times

What happens when a continuously evolving stochastic process is interrupted with large changes at random intervals $\tau$ distributed as a power-law $\sim \tau^{-(1+\alpha)};\alpha>0$? Modeling the stochastic process by diffusion and the large changes as abrupt resets to the initial condition, we obtain {\em exact} closed-form expressions for both static and dynamic quantities, while accounting for strong correlations implied by a power-law. Our results show that the resulting dynamics exhibits a spectrum of rich long-time behavior, from an ever-spreading spatial distribution for $\alpha < 1$, to one that is time independent for $\alpha > 1$. The dynamics has strong consequences on the time to reach a distant target for the first time; we specifically show that there exists an optimal $\alpha$ that minimizes the mean time to reach the target, thereby offering a step towards a viable strategy to locate targets in a crowded environment.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. v2: Version published in Phys. Rev. E as a rapid comm., includes Suppl. Ma

Condensate formation in a zero-range process with random site capacities

We study the effect of quenched disorder on the zero-range process (ZRP), a system of interacting particles undergoing biased hopping on a one-dimensional periodic lattice, with the disorder entering through random capacities of sites. In the usual ZRP, sites can accommodate an arbitrary number of particles, and for a class of hopping rates and high enough density, the steady state exhibits a condensate which holds a finite fraction of the total number of particles. The sites of the disordered zero-range process considered here have finite capacities chosen randomly from the Pareto distribution. From the exact steady state measure of the model, we identify the conditions for condensate formation, in terms of parameters that involve both interactions (through the hop rates) and randomness (through the distribution of the site capacities). Our predictions are supported by results obtained from a direct numerical sampling of the steady state and from Monte Carlo simulations. Our study reveals that for a given realization of disorder, the condensate can relocate on the subset of sites with largest capacities. We also study sample-to-sample variation of the critical density required to observe condensation, and show that the corresponding distribution obeys scaling, and has a Gaussian or a Levy-stable form depending on the values of the relevant parameters.Comment: Contribution to the JStatMech Special Issue dedicated to the Galileo Galilei Institute, Florence Workshop "Advances in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics",v2: close to the published versio

Dynamics of coupled oscillator systems in presence of a local potential

We consider a long-range model of coupled phase-only oscillators subject to a local potential and evolving in presence of thermal noise. The model is a non-trivial generalization of the celebrated Kuramoto model of collective synchronization. We demonstrate by exact results and numerics a surprisingly rich long-time behavior, in which the system settles into either a stationary state that could be in or out of equilibrium and supports either global synchrony or absence of it, or, in a time-periodic synchronized state. The system shows both continuous and discontinuous phase transitions, as well as an interesting reentrant transition in which the system successively loses and gains synchrony on steady increase of the relevant tuning parameter.Comment: v2: close to the published versio

Quasistationarity in a long-range interacting model of particles moving on a sphere

We consider a long-range interacting system of $N$ particles moving on a spherical surface under an attractive Heisenberg-like interaction of infinite range, and evolving under deterministic Hamilton dynamics. The system may also be viewed as one of globally coupled Heisenberg spins. In equilibrium, the system has a continuous phase transition from a low-energy magnetized phase, in which the particles are clustered on the spherical surface, to a high-energy homogeneous phase. The dynamical behavior of the model is studied analytically by analyzing the Vlasov equation for the evolution of the single-particle distribution, and numerically by direct simulations. The model is found to exhibit long lived non-magnetized quasistationary states (QSSs) which in the thermodynamic limit are dynamically stable within an energy range where the equilibrium state is magnetized. For finite $N$, these states relax to equilibrium over a time that increases algebraically with $N$. In the dynamically unstable regime, non-magnetized states relax fast to equilibrium over a time that scales as $\log N$. These features are retained in presence of a global anisotropy in the magnetization.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; v2: refs. added, published versio

Classical Heisenberg spins with long-range interactions: Relaxation to equilibrium for finite systems

Systems with long-range interactions often relax towards statistical equilibrium over timescales that diverge with $N$, the number of particles. A recent work [S. Gupta and D. Mukamel, J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp. P03015 (2011)] analyzed a model system comprising $N$ globally coupled classical Heisenberg spins and evolving under classical spin dynamics. It was numerically shown to relax to equilibrium over a time that scales superlinearly with $N$. Here, we present a detailed study of the Lenard-Balescu operator that accounts at leading order for the finite-$N$ effects driving this relaxation. We demonstrate that corrections at this order are identically zero, so that relaxation occurs over a time longer than of order $N$, in agreement with the reported numerical results.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor changes, published versio