The multicolour East model

Published in Preprint, 2022

This paper contains the second half of the results of my Ph.D. thesis.

Download paper and citation here.

Abstract

We consider the multicolour East model, a model of glass forming liquids closely related to the East model on Zd. The state space (G{})Zd consists of |G|2d different vacancy types and the neutral state . To each hG we associate unique facilitation mechanisms {chx}xZd that correspond to rotated versions of the East model constraints. If chx is satisfied, the state on x can transition from h to with rate p(0,1) or vice versa with rate qh(0,1), where generally qhqh if hh. Notably, vertices in the state h cannot transition directly to hh and neighbouring h-vacancies do not contribute in satisfying chx. Thus, there is a novel blocking mechanism between vacancies of differing type. We find sufficient conditions on the model geometry to have a positive spectral gap and prove that with |G|=2d the model is not ergodic. For d=2 we prove that the model with |G|3 has positive spectral gap and we find sufficient conditions on the transition rates for the spectral gap to be given in the leading order by the spectral gap of the East model on Z2 with parameter qmin=minhGqh in the limit qmin0. In particular, we prove this when there are hG with qhqmin by explicitly constructing mechanisms on which the frequent vacancy types cooperate to facilitate the East movement of the least frequent vacancies.