Generic two-phase coexistence in nonequilibrium systems

摘要

A beautifully simple model introduced a couple of decades ago, Toom's cellular automaton, revealed that non-equilibrium systems may exhibit generic bistability, i.e. two-phase coexistence over a finite area of the (two-dimensional) phase diagram, in violation of the equilibrium Gibbs phase rule. In this paper we analyse two interfacial models, describing more realistic situations, that share with Toom's model a phase diagram with a broad region of phase coexistence. An analysis of the interfacial models yields conditions for generic bistability in terms of physically relevant parameters that may be controlled experimentally.