Local-time formula for dissipation in solid ionic electrolytes

When ions move through solids, they interact with the solid's constituent atoms and cause them to vibrate around their equilibrium points. This vibration, in turn, modifies the potential landscape through which the mobile ions travel. Because the present-time potential depends on past interactions, the coupling is inherently nonlocal in time, making its numerical and analytical treatment challenging. For sufficiently slow-moving ions, we linearize the phonon spectrum to show that these nonlocal effects can be ignored, giving rise to a draglike force. Unlike the more familiar drag coefficient in liquids, the drag takes on a matrix form due to the crystalline structure of the framework. We numerically simulate trajectories and dissipation rates using both the time-local and nonlocal formulas to validate our simplification. The time-local formula dramatically reduces the computational cost of calculating the motion of a mobile particle through a crystalline framework and clearly connects the properties of the material to the drag experienced by the particle. Published by the American Physical Society 2024