Classical Motion in Force Fields with Short Range Correlations

We study the long time motion of fast particles moving through time-dependent random force fields with correlations that decay rapidly in space, but not necessarily in time. The time dependence of the averaged kinetic energy 〈p ²(t)〉/2 and mean-squared displacement 〈q ²(t)〉 is shown to exhibit a large degree of universality; it depends only on whether the force is, or is not, a gradient vector field. When it is, 〈p ²(t)〉～t ^2/5 independently of the details of the potential and of the space dimension. The stochastically accelerated particle motion is then superballistic in one dimension, with 〈q ²(t)〉～t ^12/5, and ballistic in higher dimensions, with 〈q ²(t)〉～t ². These predictions are supported by numerical results in one and two dimensions. For force fields not obtained from a potential field, the power laws are different: 〈p ²(t)〉～t ^2/3 and 〈q ²(t)〉～t ^8/3 in all dimensions d≥1.