Random fields at a nonequilibrium phase transition

Abstract

We investigate nonequilibrium phase transitions in the presence of disorder that locally breaks the symmetry between two equivalent macroscopic states. In low-dimensional equilibrium systems, such "random-field" disorder is known to have dramatic effects: It prevents spontaneous symmetry breaking and completely destroys the phase transition. In contrast, we demonstrate that the phase transition of the one-dimensional generalized contact process persists in the presence of random field disorder. The dynamics in the symmetry-broken phase becomes ultraslow and is described by a Sinai walk of the domain walls between two different absorbing states. We discuss the generality and limitations of our theory, and we illustrate our results by means of large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations.

5 pages, 4 eps figures included, final version as published

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• Temporal disorder does not forbid discontinuous absorbing phase transitions in low dimensional systems
• Role of inflexible minorities in the evolution of alcohol consumption
• Comparing the influence of distinct kinds of temporal disorder in a low dimensional absorbing transition model
• Contact processes with competitive dynamics in bipartite lattices: Effects of distinct interactions
• Random field disorder at an absorbing state transition in one and two dimensions
• Influence of distinct kinds of temporal disorder in discontinuous phase transitions
• Discontinuous transitions can survive to quenched disorder in a 2-dimensional nonequilibrium system
• Effect of diffusion in one-dimensional discontinuous absorbing phase transitions
• Quenched disorder in the contact process on bipartite sublattices