Non-equilibrium dynamics of finite-dimensional disordered systems : RG flow towards an "infinite disorder" fixed point at large times

TL;DR

This paper studies the long-time non-equilibrium dynamics of disordered systems using a strong disorder RG approach, revealing an infinite disorder fixed point and confirming the droplet scaling picture with numerical analysis of a 2D directed polymer.

Contribution

It introduces simplified RG rules that remain asymptotically exact for analyzing infinite disorder fixed points in disordered systems.

Findings

RG flow approaches an infinite disorder fixed point.

Simplified RG rules are effective for large systems.

Numerical estimates of the barrier exponent $$ are obtained.

Abstract

To describe the non-equilibrium dynamics of random systems, we have recently introduced (C. Monthus and T. Garel, arxiv:0802.2502) a 'strong disorder renormalization' (RG) procedure in configuration space that can be defined for any master equation. In the present paper, we analyze in details the properties of the large time dynamics whenever the RG flow is towards some "infinite disorder" fixed point, where the width of the renormalized barriers distribution grows indefinitely upon iteration. In particular, we show how the strong disorder RG rules can be then simplified while keeping their asymptotic exactness, because the preferred exit channel out of a given renormalized valley typically dominates asymptotically over the other exit channels. We explain why the present approach is an explicit construction in favor of the droplet scaling picture where the dynamics is governed by the logarithmic growth of the coherence length $l(t) \sim (\ln t)^{1/\psi}$, and where the statistics of barriers corresponds to a very strong hierarchy of valleys within valleys. As an example of application, we have followed numerically the RG flow for the case of a directed polymer in a two-dimensional random medium. The full RG rules are used to check that the RG flow is towards some infinite disorder fixed point, whereas the simplified RG rules allow to study bigger sizes and to estimate the barrier exponent $\psi$ of the fixed point.