Kinetically constrained spin models

We analyze the density and size dependence of the relaxation time for kinetically constrained spin models (KCSM) intensively studied in the physics literature as simple models sharing some of the features of the glass transition. KCSM are interacting particle systems on Zd with Glauber-like dynamics, reversible w.r.t. a simple product i.i.d Bernoulli(p) measure. The essential feature of a KCSM is that the creation/destruction of a particle at a given site can occur only if the current configuration around it satisfies certain constraints which completely define each specific model. No other interaction is present in the model. From the mathematical point of view, the basic issues concerning positivity of the spectral gap inside the ergodicity region and its scaling with the particle density p remained open for most KCSM (with the notably exception of the East model in d = 1; Aldous and Diaconis in J Stat Phys 107(5– 6):945–975, 2002). Here for the first time we: (i) identify the ergodicity region by establishing a connection with an associated bootstrap percolation model;