Strongly anisotropic nonequilibrium phase transition in Ising models with friction

Abstract

The nonequilibrium phase transition in driven two-dimensional Ising models with two different geometries is investigated using Monte Carlo methods as well as analytical calculations. The models show dissipation through fluctuation induced friction near the critical point. We first consider high driving velocities and demonstrate that both systems are in the same universality class and undergo a strongly anisotropic nonequilibrium phase transition, with anisotropy exponent θ=3. Within a field theoretical ansatz the simulation results are confirmed. The crossover from Ising to mean field behavior in dependency of system size and driving velocity is analyzed using crossover scaling. It turns out that for all finite velocities the phase transition becomes strongly anisotropic in the thermodynamic limit.