Hydrodynamic limit of a disordered lattice gas (Q1434295)

The authors consider the following model. To each point \(x\in {\mathbb Z}^d\) there is attached a variable \(\eta_x\), the occupation number of a lattice gas particle taking values \(\eta_x = 0, 1\). The only inter-particle interaction is mutual exclusion. The Hamiltonian of the system of particles in \(\Lambda \subset {\mathbb Z}^d\) is \[ H_\Lambda^{\alpha, \lambda} (\eta) = - \sum_{x \in \Lambda} (\alpha_x + \lambda )\eta_x, \] where \(\alpha =(\alpha_{x})_{x\in {\mathbb Z}^d}\) is a random external field and \(\lambda\in {\mathbb R}\) is a chemical potential. The random variables \(\alpha_x\) are i.i.d. and such that \(| \alpha_x| \leq B\) for some finite \(B>0\). The dynamics of the model is described by the continuous-time Markov chain with the generator \[ {\mathcal L}_\Lambda f (\eta) = \sum_{x,y \in \Lambda, \;| x-y| =1} c^\alpha_{x,y} (\eta) [ f(\eta^{x,y}) - f(\eta)], \] where \(\eta^{x,y}\) is the configuration obtained from \(\eta\) by interchanging the components \(\eta_x\) and \(\eta_y\). The nonnegative real quantities \(c^\alpha_{x,y}\) are the transition rates of the process. For this model, it is proven that in dimension \(d \geq 3\) the hydrodynamic limit exists for almost all realizations of \(\alpha\). It is described by a nonlinear diffusion equation with diffusion matrix characterized by a variational principle.