Anomalous diffusion and singular transport from hydrodynamic recoupling

In charge neutral fluids, such as the Dirac fluid in graphene at the Dirac point, charge transport remains diffusive despite the presence of ballistically propagating sound waves: sound waves ``hydrodynamically decouple'' from the slower charge fluctuations. For quasi-one-dimensional charge neutral fluids, we show that this convective charge diffusion is not smoothly connected to the normal diffusion that arises when momentum conservation is broken by noise (or static impurities). Instead, the charge diffusion constant is a discontinuous function of noise, which (in the weak-noise limit) depends only on the ratio of momentum and energy relaxation rates. In the special limit of momentum-conserving noise (e.g., spatially uniform fluctuations of the Hamiltonian), the diffusion constant diverges in the presence of noise. We describe the resulting superdiffusion in terms of coupled Burgers equations. We present a general mechanism---hydrodynamic recoupling---by which weak noise can induce singular changes in transport coefficients. Our results highlight the limits of zero-noise extrapolation for predicting dynamical quantities like diffusion constants.

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Publication Details

Journal
Physical Review Letters
Published
2026-10-13
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/bzz4-ggnm
Primary Topic
Quantum and electron transport phenomena
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Anomalous diffusion and singular transport from hydrodynamic recoupling

Ewan McCulloch, Sarang Gopalakrishnan, Romain Vasseur
Physical Review Letters
Quantum and electron transport phenomena
article

Anomalous diffusion and singular transport from hydrodynamic recoupling

Ewan McCulloch, Sarang Gopalakrishnan, Romain Vasseur
article en

Abstract

In charge neutral fluids, such as the Dirac fluid in graphene at the Dirac point, charge transport remains diffusive despite the presence of ballistically propagating sound waves: sound waves ``hydrodynamically decouple'' from the slower charge fluctuations. For quasi-one-dimensional charge neutral fluids, we show that this convective charge diffusion is not smoothly connected to the normal diffusion that arises when momentum conservation is broken by noise (or static impurities). Instead, the charge diffusion constant is a discontinuous function of noise, which (in the weak-noise limit) depends only on the ratio of momentum and energy relaxation rates. In the special limit of momentum-conserving noise (e.g., spatially uniform fluctuations of the Hamiltonian), the diffusion constant diverges in the presence of noise. We describe the resulting superdiffusion in terms of coupled Burgers equations. We present a general mechanism---hydrodynamic recoupling---by which weak noise can induce singular changes in transport coefficients. Our results highlight the limits of zero-noise extrapolation for predicting dynamical quantities like diffusion constants.

Physical Review Letters
National Science Foundation, Princeton University, European Commission, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Université de Genève, Division of Materials Research
Openalex Percentile: Top 95%
Quantum and electron transport phenomena
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