Critical phenomena of nonequilibrium dynamical systems with two absorbing states

Abstract

We study nonequilibrium dynamical models with two absorbing states: interacting monomer-dimer models, probabilistic cellular automata models, nonequilibrium kinetic Ising models. These models exhibit a continuous phase transition from an active phase into an absorbing phase which belongs to the universality class of the models with the parity conservation. However, when we break the symmetry between the absorbing states by introducing a symmetry-breaking field, Monte Carlo simulations show that the system goes back to the conventional directed percolation universality class. In terms of domain wall language, the parity conservation is not affected by the presence of the symmetry-breaking field. So the symmetry between the absorbing states rather than the conservation laws plays an essential role in determining the universality class. We also perform Monte Carlo simulations for the various interface dynamics between different absorbing states, which yield new universal dynamic exponents. With the symmetry-breaking field, the interface moves, in average, with a constant velocity in the direction of the unpreferred absorbing state and the dynamic scaling exponents apparently assume trivial values. However, we find that the hyperscaling relation for the directed percolation universality class is restored if one focuses on the dynamics of the interface on the side of the preferred absorbing state only.