Life and death of stationary linear response in anomalous continuous time random walk dynamics

Abstract

Linear theory of stationary response in thermal systems subjected to external perturbations requires to find equilibrium correlation function of the responding system variable in the absence of external perturbations. Studies of the response of the systems exhibiting anomalously slow dynamics are often based on the continuous time random walk description (CTRW) with divergent mean waiting times. The bulk of the literature on anomalous response contains linear response functions like one by Cole-Cole calculated from such a CTRW theory and applied to thermal systems. Here we show within a fairly simple and general model that for the systems with divergent mean waiting times the stationary response is absent, in accordance with some recent studies. The absence of stationary response at thermal equilibrium (or dying to zero non-stationary response in aging experiments) would confirm CTRW with divergent mean waiting times as underlying physical relaxation mechanism, but reject it otherwise. We show that the absence of stationary response is closely related to the breaking of ergodicity of the corresponding dynamical variable. As an important new result, we derive a generalized Cole-Cole response within ergodic CTRW dynamics with finite waiting time. Moreover, we provide a physically reasonable explanation of the origin and wide presence of 1/f noise in condensed systems for ergodic dynamics close to normal, rather than mostly deviating.