MPRG Loos Seminar: Relaxation Speed in Quenched-Random Force Fields
MPRG Loos Seminar
- Datum: 06.05.2026
- Uhrzeit: 11:00 - 12:00
- Vortragende(r): Dr. Jan Meibohm
- TU Berlin, Germany
- Ort: Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation (MPIDS)
- Raum: Ludwig Prandtl Lecture Hall, AI Building (Am Faßberg 11, 37077 Göttingen)
- Gastgeber: MPIDS
- Kontakt: sarah.loos@mpg.de
How does static disorder shape the speed of thermal relaxation? In this talk I present results on the asymptotic relaxation rate of a Brownian particle in a harmonic potential perturbed by a quenched Gaussian random force field, which is a tractable model for rugged energy landscapes in complex systems.
The central result challenges a common intuition: depending on the correlation length and the conservative/non-conservative character of the disorder, relaxation can be exponentially faster or slower than in the disorder-free case. Using perturbation theory in the disorder strength, I derive analytic expressions for the mean and variance of the relaxation rate shift, and show that these are nonmonotonous functions of the correlation length with universal short- and long-range limits. In higher dimensions, the degeneracy structure of the unperturbed Fokker–Planck spectrum introduces connections to random matrix theory and reveals a critical dimension d = 4 for non-conservative forces. These results suggest that correlated disorder, rather than being merely a nuisance, can serve as a tunable handle on relaxation dynamics in complex systems.
The central result challenges a common intuition: depending on the correlation length and the conservative/non-conservative character of the disorder, relaxation can be exponentially faster or slower than in the disorder-free case. Using perturbation theory in the disorder strength, I derive analytic expressions for the mean and variance of the relaxation rate shift, and show that these are nonmonotonous functions of the correlation length with universal short- and long-range limits. In higher dimensions, the degeneracy structure of the unperturbed Fokker–Planck spectrum introduces connections to random matrix theory and reveals a critical dimension d = 4 for non-conservative forces. These results suggest that correlated disorder, rather than being merely a nuisance, can serve as a tunable handle on relaxation dynamics in complex systems.