Tracer diffusion at low temperature in kinetically constrained models

Abstract

We describe the motion of a tracer in an environment given by a kinetically constrained spin model (KCSM) at equilibrium. We check convergence of its trajectory properly rescaled to a Brownian motion and positivity of the diffusion coefficient D as soon as the spectral gap of the environment is positive (which coincides with the ergodicity region under general conditions). Then we study the asymptotic behavior of D when the density 1-q of the environment goes to 1 in two classes of KCSM. For noncooperative models, the diffusion coefficient D scales like a power of q, with an exponent that we compute explicitly. In the case of the Fredrickson-Andersen one-spin facilitated model, this proves a prediction made in Jung, Garrahan and Chandler [Phys. Rev. E 69 (2004) 061205]. For the East model, instead we prove that the diffusion coefficient is comparable to the spectral gap, which goes to zero faster than any power of q. This result contradicts the prediction of physicists (Jung, Garrahan and Chandler [Phys. Rev. E 69 (2004) 061205; J. Chem. Phys. 123 (2005) 084509]), based on numerical simulations, that suggested D ∼ gapξwith ξ <1.