Boundary-induced Transitions Research Articles

Boundary-induced transitions in Möbius quenches of holographic BCFT

Boundary effects play an interesting role in finite-size physical systems. In this work, we study the boundary-induced properties of 1+1-dimensional critical systems driven by inhomogeneous Möbius-like quenches. We focus on the entanglement entropy in BCFTs with a large central charge and a sparse spectrum of low-dimensional operators. We find that the choice of boundary conditions leads to different scenarios of dynamical phase transitions. We also derive these results in a holographic description in terms of intersecting branes in AdS3, and find a precise match.

Finite-size scaling and universality for the totally asymmetric simple-exclusion process

The applicability of the concepts of finite-size scaling and universality to nonequilibrium phase transitions is considered in the framework of the one-dimensional totally asymmetric simple-exclusion process with open boundaries. In the thermodynamic limit there are boundary-induced transitions both of the first and second order between steady-state phases of the model. We derive finite-size scaling expressions for the current near the continuous phase transition and for the local density near the first-order transition under different stochastic dynamics and compare them to establish the existence of universal functions. Next we study numerically the finite-size behavior of the Lee-Yang zeros of the normalization factor for the different steady-state probabilities.