Superdiffusive central limit theorem for a class of driven diffusive systems at the critical dimension

TL;DR

This paper proves a superdiffusive central limit theorem for driven diffusive systems modeled by the stochastic Burgers equation at the critical dimension, showing convergence to a Gaussian fixed point with renormalized coefficients.

Contribution

It extends the universality results of the stochastic Burgers equation to the critical dimension and out-of-equilibrium systems, with new estimates and approximation techniques.

Findings

Convergence to a Gaussian fixed point under superdiffusive scaling.

First universality result for out-of-equilibrium driven diffusive systems.

New methods for handling non-quadratic nonlinearities in stochastic PDEs.

Abstract

We study the large-scale behaviour of a class of driven diffusive systems modelled by a Stochastic Partial Differential Equation, the Stochastic Burgers Equation (SBE) with general nonlinearity, at the critical dimension and in infinite volume. Our main result shows that, under a logarithmically superdiffusive space-time scaling, it is given by the same explicit Gaussian Fixed point obtained in [G. Cannizzaro, Q. Moulard, & F. Toninelli, arxiv.org/abs/2501.00344, 2025] for the quadratic SBE, but with suitably renormalised coefficients, thereby rigorously justifying and partly correcting the classical Physics derivation of the SBE in [H. van Beijeren, R. Kutner, & H. Spohn, Phys. Rev. Lett., 1986] based on Spohn's theory of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics. Besides, ours is the first universality-type result for out-of-equilibrium systems and the first extension of [M. Hairer, J. Quastel, Forum of Mathematics, Pi, Vol. 6, 2018, e3], to the critical dimension and beyond weak coupling. The major challenge in our work is the mild growth condition on the nonlinearity which renders even the well-posedness of the microscopic equation non-trivial. Additional key novelties include the derivation of fine estimates on the non-quadratic part of the generator as well as a new approximation for the resolvent associated to the solution of the quadratic SBE.