Quenched disorder forbids discontinuous transitions in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems

Villa Martín, Paula and Bonachela, Juan A. and Muñoz, Miguel A. (2014) Quenched disorder forbids discontinuous transitions in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems. Physical Review E, 89 (1). 012145. ISSN 2470-0053 (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.89.012145)

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Abstract

Quenched disorder affects significantly the behavior of phase transitions. The Imry-Ma-Aizenman-Wehr-Berker argument prohibits first-order or discontinuous transitions and their concomitant phase coexistence in low-dimensional equilibrium systems in the presence of random fields. Instead, discontinuous transitions become rounded or even continuous once disorder is introduced. Here we show that phase coexistence and first-order phase transitions are also precluded in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems with quenched disorder: discontinuous transitions in two-dimensional systems with absorbing states become continuous in the presence of quenched disorder. We also study the universal features of this disorder-induced criticality and find them to be compatible with the universality class of the directed percolation with quenched disorder. Thus, we conclude that first-order transitions do not exist in low-dimensional disordered systems, not even in genuinely nonequilibrium systems with absorbing states.

ORCID iDs

Villa Martín, Paula, Bonachela, Juan A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3316-8120 and Muñoz, Miguel A.;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)