Relaxation of disordered systems at low temperatures is supposed to be dominated by activation over barriers. But very little direct evidence of this scenario is available, both on theoretical and numerical approaches. Trap models represent extremely simplified realizations of activated dynamics which can be solved exactly. Their properties are characterized by the distribution of trapping energies and the transition rates between traps, which lead to particular predictions for the distribution of trapping times. To which extent the trap phenomenolgy is representative of more complex disordered systems is still not known. In this talk I will address this question for the Ising p-spin model.
Federico Ricci Tersenghi