- Letter
- Open Access
Pushing-induced arrest across lattices and dimensions
Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032036 – Published 31 August, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/c6yz-15w5
Abstract
Tracer-media interactions can give rise to transport phenomena beyond classical models; e.g., obstacle pushing can eliminate percolation. We demonstrate that the existing “snowplow” mechanism proposed to explain this effect fails in three dimensions. We show that confinement is governed by emergent trapping—rare “door-closing” events that occur with an approximately constant probability per step at low obstacle densities, thus yielding exponential survival. This allows prediction of the time-dependent mean-squared displacement from short-time estimates of the diffusion constant and trapping probability, providing a minimal description of pushing-induced arrest across lattices and dimensions.
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Supplemental Material
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