Paper detail

Critical phenomena and universal dynamics in one-dimensional driven diffusive systems with two species of particles

Recent work on stochastic interacting particle systems with two particle species (or single-species systems with kinematic constraints) has demonstrated the existence of spontaneous symmetry breaking, long-range order and phase coexistence in nonequilibrium steady states, even if translational invariance is not broken by defects or open boundaries. If both particle species are conserved, the temporal behaviour is largely unexplored, but first results of current work on the transition from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale yield exact coupled nonlinear hydrodynamic equations and indicate the emergence of novel types of shock waves which are collective excitations stabilized by the flow of microscopic fluctuations. We review the basic stationary and dynamic properties of these systems, highlighting the role of conservation laws and kinetic constraints for the hydrodynamic behaviour, the microscopic origin of domain wall (shock) stability and the coarsening dynamics of domains during phase separation.