Diffusing Reconstituting Dimers: A Simple Model of Broken Ergodicity and Ageing

Abstract

We consider a simple analytically tractable model of metastability and ageing. In this model, a particle can jump left or right by two steps to an unoccupied site, but only if the the site in between is occupied. We show that the model is strongly nonergodic, and the number of metastable states increases as exponential of the size of the system. Within a sector, the model is equivalent to the Heisenberg model and is exactly soluble. We study how this strong breaking of ergodicity affects the hydrodynamical description of long wavelength density fluctuations in the system. Finally, we study the effect of allowing transitions between different metastable states at a very slow rate.