Energy Spectrum of Local Multiparticle Configurations and Mechanism of Anomalously Slow Relaxation of the System of Strongly Interacting Liquid Clusters in a Disordered Nanoporous Medium According to the Self-Organized Criticality Scenario

Abstract

It has been shown that changes in the energy of a system of nonwetting-liquid clusters confined in a random nanoporous medium in the process of relaxation can be written in the quasiparticle approximation in the form of the sum of the energies of local (metastable) configurations of liquid clusters interacting with clusters in the connected nearest pores. The energy spectrum and density of states of the local configuration have been calculated. It has been shown that the relaxation of the state of the system occurs through the scenario of self-organized criticality (SOC). The process is characterized by the expectation of a fluctuation necessary for overcoming a local energy barrier of the metastable state with the subsequent rapid hydrodynamic extrusion of the liquid under the action of the surface buoyancy forces of the nonwetting framework. In this case, the dependence of the interaction between local configurations on the number of filled pores belonging to the infinite percolation cluster of filled pores serves as an internal feedback initiating the SOC process. The calculations give a power-law time dependence of the relative volume of the confined liquid. The developed model of the relaxation of the porous medium with the nonwetting liquid demonstrates possible mechanisms and scenarios of SOC for disordered atomic systems.