Stochastic processes, slaves and supersymmetry

We extend the work of Tănase-Nicola and Kurchan on the structure of diffusion processes and the associated supersymmetry algebra by examining the responses of a simple statistical system to external disturbances of various kinds. We consider both the stochastic differential equations (SDEs) for the process and the associated diffusion equation. The influence of the disturbances can be understood by augmenting the original SDE with an equation for slave variables. The evolution of the slave variables describes the behaviour of line elements carried along in the stochastic flow. These line elements, together with the associated surface and volume elements constructed from them, provide the basis of the supersymmetry properties of the theory. For ease of visualization, and in order to emphasize a helpful electromagnetic analogy, we work in three dimensions. The results are all generalizable to higher dimensions and can be specialized to one and two dimensions. The electromagnetic analogy is a useful starting point for calculating asymptotic results at low temperature that can be compared with direct numerical evaluations. We also examine the problems that arise in a direct numerical simulation of the stochastic equation together with the slave equations. We pay special attention to the dependence of the slave variable statistics on temperature. We identify in specific models the critical temperature below which the slave variable distribution ceases to have a variance and consider the effect on estimates of susceptibilities.