738 research outputs found
Critical behavior of a non-equilibrium interacting particle system driven by an oscillatory field
First- and second-order temperature driven transitions are studied, in a
lattice gas driven by an oscillatory field. The short time dynamics study
provides upper and lower bounds for the first-order transition points obtained
using standard simulations. The difference between upper and lower bounds is a
measure for the strength of the first-order transition and becomes negligible
small for densities close to one half. In addition, we give strong evidence on
the existence of multicritical points and a critical temperature gap, the
latter induced by the anisotropy introduced by the driving field.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures; to appear in Europhys. Let
Theoretical Characterization of the Interface in a Nonequilibrium Lattice System
The influence of nonequilibrium bulk conditions on the properties of the
interfaces exhibited by a kinetic Ising--like model system with nonequilibrium
steady states is studied. The system is maintained out of equilibrium by
perturbing the familiar spin--flip dynamics at temperature T with
completely--random flips; one may interpret these as ideally simulating some
(dynamic) impurities. We find evidence that, in the present case, the
nonequilibrium mechanism adds to the basic thermal one resulting on a
renormalization of microscopic parameters such as the probability of
interfacial broken bonds. On this assumption, we develop theory for the
nonequilibrium "surface tension", which happens to show a non--monotonous
behavior with a maximum at some finite T. It ensues, in full agreement with
Monte Carlo simulations, that interface fluctuations differ qualitatively from
the equilibrium case, e.g., the interface remains rough at zero--T. We discuss
on some consequences of these facts for nucleation theory, and make some
explicit predictions concerning the nonequilibrium droplet structure.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Re
Exact solution of the one-dimensional deterministic Fixed-Energy Sandpile
In reason of the strongly non-ergodic dynamical behavior, universality
properties of deterministic Fixed-Energy Sandpiles are still an open and
debated issue. We investigate the one-dimensional model, whose microscopical
dynamics can be solved exactly, and provide a deeper understanding of the
origin of the non-ergodicity. By means of exact arguments, we prove the
occurrence of orbits of well-defined periods and their dependence on the
conserved energy density. Further statistical estimates of the size of the
attraction's basins of the different periodic orbits lead to a complete
characterization of the activity vs. energy density phase diagram in the limit
of large system's size.Comment: 4 pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Functional Optimization in Complex Excitable Networks
We study the effect of varying wiring in excitable random networks in which
connection weights change with activity to mold local resistance or
facilitation due to fatigue. Dynamic attractors, corresponding to patterns of
activity, are then easily destabilized according to three main modes, including
one in which the activity shows chaotic hopping among the patterns. We describe
phase transitions to this regime, and show a monotonous dependence of critical
parameters on the heterogeneity of the wiring distribution. Such correlation
between topology and functionality implies, in particular, that tasks which
require unstable behavior --such as pattern recognition, family discrimination
and categorization-- can be most efficiently performed on highly heterogeneous
networks. It also follows a possible explanation for the abundance in nature of
scale--free network topologies.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Unequal Intra-layer Coupling in a Bilayer Driven Lattice Gas
The system under study is a twin-layered square lattice gas at half-filling,
being driven to non-equilibrium steady states by a large, finite `electric'
field. By making intra-layer couplings unequal we were able to extend the phase
diagram obtained by Hill, Zia and Schmittmann (1996) and found that the
tri-critical point, which separates the phase regions of the stripped (S) phase
(stable at positive interlayer interactions J_3), the filled-empty (FE) phase
(stable at negative J_3) and disorder (D), is shifted even further into the
negative J_3 region as the coupling traverse to the driving field increases.
Many transient phases to the S phase at the S-FE boundary were found to be
long-lived. We also attempted to test whether the universality class of D-FE
transitions under a drive is still Ising. Simulation results suggest a value of
1.75 for the exponent gamma but a value close to 2.0 for the ratio gamma/nu. We
speculate that the D-FE second order transition is different from Ising near
criticality, where observed first-order-like transitions between FE and its
"local minimum" cousin occur during each simulation run.Comment: 29 pages, 19 figure
Boundary-induced heterogeneous absorbing states
We study two different types of systems with many absorbing states (with and
without a conservation law) and scrutinize the effect of walls/boundaries
(either absorbing or reflecting) into them. In some cases, non-trivial
structured absorbing configurations (characterized by a background field)
develop around the wall. We study such structures using a mean-field approach
as well as computer simulations. The main results are: i) for systems in the
directed percolation class, a very fast (exponential) convergence of the
background to its bulk value is observed; ii) for systems with a conservation
law, power-law decaying landscapes are induced by both types of walls: while
for absorbing walls this effect is already present in the mean-field
approximation, for reflecting walls the structured background is a
noise-induced effect. The landscapes are shown to converge to their asymptotic
bulk values with an exponent equal to the inverse of the bulk correlation
length exponent. Finally, the implications of these results in the context of
self-organizing systems are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure
Reentrant Behavior of the Spinodal Curve in a Nonequilibrium Ferromagnet
The metastable behavior of a kinetic Ising--like ferromagnetic model system
in which a generic type of microscopic disorder induces nonequilibrium steady
states is studied by computer simulation and a mean--field approach. We pay
attention, in particular, to the spinodal curve or intrinsic coercive field
that separates the metastable region from the unstable one. We find that, under
strong nonequilibrium conditions, this exhibits reentrant behavior as a
function of temperature. That is, metastability does not happen in this regime
for both low and high temperatures, but instead emerges for intermediate
temperature, as a consequence of the non-linear interplay between thermal and
nonequilibrium fluctuations. We argue that this behavior, which is in contrast
with equilibrium phenomenology and could occur in actual impure specimens,
might be related to the presence of an effective multiplicative noise in the
system.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; Final version to appear in Phys. Rev. E; Section
V has been revise
Weakly disordered absorbing-state phase transitions
The effects of quenched disorder on nonequilibrium phase transitions in the
directed percolation universality class are revisited. Using a strong-disorder
energy-space renormalization group, it is shown that for any amount of disorder
the critical behavior is controlled by an infinite-randomness fixed point in
the universality class of the random transverse-field Ising models. The
experimental relevance of our results are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figures; (v2) references and discussion on experiments
added; (v3) published version, minor typos corrected, some side discussions
dropped due to size constrain
Thresholds for epidemic spreading in networks
We study the threshold of epidemic models in quenched networks with degree
distribution given by a power-law. For the susceptible-infected-susceptible
(SIS) model the activity threshold lambda_c vanishes in the large size limit on
any network whose maximum degree k_max diverges with the system size, at odds
with heterogeneous mean-field (HMF) theory. The vanishing of the threshold has
not to do with the scale-free nature of the connectivity pattern and is instead
originated by the largest hub in the system being active for any spreading rate
lambda>1/sqrt{k_max} and playing the role of a self-sustained source that
spreads the infection to the rest of the system. The
susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model displays instead agreement with HMF
theory and a finite threshold for scale-rich networks. We conjecture that on
quenched scale-rich networks the threshold of generic epidemic models is
vanishing or finite depending on the presence or absence of a steady state.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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