Metastability associated with many-body explosion of eigenmode expansion coefficients

Abstract

Metastable states in stochastic systems are often characterized by the presence of small eigenvalues in the generator of the stochastic dynamics. We here show that metastability in many-body systems is not necessarily associated with small eigenvalues. Instead, many-body explosion of eigenmode expansion coefficients characterizes slow relaxation, which is demonstrated for two models, interacting particles in a double-well potential and the Fredrickson-Andersen model, the latter of which is a prototypical example of kinetically constrained models studied in glass and jamming transitions. Our results provide new insights into slow relaxation and metastability in many-body stochastic systems.