Deposition and evaporation of k-mers: dynamics of a many-state system

Abstract

When the dynamics of a system partitions the phase space of configurations into very many disjoint sectors, we are faced with an assignment problem: Given a configuration, how can we tell which sector it belongs to? We study this problem in connection with the dynamics of deposition and evaporation of k particles at a time, from a lattice substrate. For k ≥ 3, the system shows complex behaviour: (a) The number of disjoint sectors in phase space grows exponentially with the size. (b) The asymptotic time dependence of the autocorrelation function shows slow decays, with power laws which depend on the sector. Both (a) and (b) are explained in terms of a nonlocal construct known as the irreducible string (IS), formed from a particle configuration by applying a deletion algorithm. The IS provides a label for sectors; the multiplicity of possible IS's accounts for (a), and let us determine sector numbers and sizes. The elements of the IS are conserved; thus their motion is responsible for the slow modes of the system, and accounts for (b) as well.