Frustrated Fields: Statistical Field Theory for Frustrated Brownian Particles on 2D Manifolds

TL;DR

This paper develops a statistical field theory for frustrated Brownian particles on 2D manifolds, revealing a low-energy nonlinear sigma model description of their orientation dynamics supported by particle simulations.

Contribution

It introduces the Frustrated Fields (F2) model for large-N Brownian particles with quenched interactions on 2D manifolds, connecting particle simulations to an effective sigma model.

Findings

Density concentrates on a precessing great-circle ring on S^2.

The low-energy dynamics are described by the nonlinear sigma model on RP^2.

The effective theory matches simulation diagnostics without adjustable parameters.

Abstract

We develop a statistical field theory that describes the large-N limit of a system of Brownian particles with quenched random pairwise interactions on a compact two-dimensional Riemannian manifold. The resulting Frustrated Fields (F2) model is a non-linear field theory for a smooth self-interacting density field $\rho$ on the manifold, with local and non-local (in space and time) self-interactions characteristic of spin-glass dynamics. Particle simulations show \emph{adiabatic dimension reduction}: on $S^2$, the density concentrates on a slowly precessing great-circle ring whose orientation is a director ($\hat{\mathbf{n}} \sim -\hat{\mathbf{n}}$, even profile). Conditioned on this simulation-supported ring saddle and on a Born-Oppenheimer separation between the slow orientation and the gapped density fluctuations, symmetry fixes the low-energy dynamics to be the nonlinear sigma model (NLSM) on the real projective plane $S^2/\mathbb{Z}_2 = \mathbb{RP}^2$ (the $\mathbb{RP}^2$ NLSM on the projective rotor space) in $(0+1)$ dimensions, governed by a single low-energy constant, the rotational diffusion coefficient $D_{\text{rot}}$. With $D_{\text{rot}}$ and the static ring profile $f_0$ measured from particle simulations, the resulting effective theory reproduces multiple independent orientation- and density-sector diagnostics with no further adjustable parameters.