Anomalous Diffusion in One-Dimensional Disordered Systems: A Discrete Fractional Laplacian Method (Part I)

Abstract

This work extends the applications of Anderson-type Hamiltonians to include transport characterized by anomalous dffusion. Herein, we investigate the transport properties of a one dimensional disordered system that employs the discrete fractional Laplacian, (-Δ)^s, s ∈(0,2), in combination with results from spectral and measure theory. It is a classical mathematical result that the standard Anderson model exhibits localization of energy states for all nonzero disorder in one-dimensional systems. Numerical simulations utilizing our proposed model demonstrate that this localization effect is enhanced for sub-diffusive realizations of the operator, s ∈(1,2), while the super-diffusive realizations of the operator, s ∈(0,1) can exhibit energy states with less localized features. These results suggest that the proposed method can be used to examine anomalous diffusion in physical systems where strong correlations, structural defects, and nonlocal effects are present.