Comment on "Fixed-energy sandpiles belong generically to directed percolation"

Alternative method for measuring characteristic lengths in absorbing phase transitions

We applied an alternative method for measuring characteristic lengths reported recently by one of us [J. M. Kim, J. Stat. Mech. (2021) 03321310.1088/1742-5468/abe599] to the models in the Manna universality class, i.e., the stochastic Manna sandpile and conserved lattice gas models in various dimensions. The universality of the Manna model has been under long debate particularly in one dimension since the work of M. Basu et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 015702 (2012)10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.015702], who claimed that the Manna model belongs to the directed percolation (DP) universality class and that the independent Manna universality class does not exist. We carried out Monte Carlo simulations for the stochastic Manna sandpile model in one, two, and three dimensions and the conserved lattice gas model in three dimensions, using both the natural initial states (NISs) and uniform initial states (UISs). In two and three dimensions, the results for R(t), defined by R(t)=L[〈ρ_{a}^{2}〉/〈ρ_{a}〉^{2}-1]^{1/d}, L and ρ_{a} being, respectively, the system size and activity density, yielded consistent results for the two initial states. R(t) is proportional to the correlation length following R(t)∼t^{1/z} at the critical point. In one dimension, the data of R(t) for the Manna model using NISs yielded anomalous behavior, suggesting that NISs require much longer prerun time steps to homogenize the distribution of particles and larger systems to eliminate the finite-size effect than those employed in the literature. On the other hand, data from UISs yielded a power-law behavior, and the estimated critical exponents differed from the values in the DP class.

Barrier-controlled nonequilibrium criticality in reactive particle systems

Nonequilibrium critical phenomena generally exist in many dynamic systems, like chemical reactions and some driven-dissipative reactive particle systems. Here, by using computer simulation and theoretical analysis, we demonstrate the crucial role of the activation barrier on the criticality of dynamic phase transitions in a minimal reactive hard-sphere model. We find that at zero thermal noise, with increasing the activation barrier, the type of transition changes from a continuous conserved directed percolation into a discontinuous dynamic transition by crossing a tricritical point. A mean-field theory combined with field simulation is proposed to explain this phenomenon. The possibility of Ising-type criticality in the nonequilibrium system at finite thermal noise is also discussed.

Universality of continuous phase transitions on random Voronoi graphs

The Voronoi construction is ubiquitous across the natural sciences and engineering. In statistical mechanics, however, only its dual, the Delaunay triangulation, has been considered in the investigation of critical phenomena. In this paper we set to fill this gap by studying three prominent systems of classical statistical mechanics, the equilibrium spin-1/2 Ising model, the nonequilibrium contact process, and the conserved stochastic sandpile model on two-dimensional random Voronoi graphs. Particular motivation comes from the fact that these graphs have vertices of constant coordination number, making it possible to isolate topological effects of quenched disorder from node-intrinsic coordination number disorder. Using large-scale numerical simulations and finite-size scaling techniques, we are able to demonstrate that all three systems belong to their respective clean universality classes. Therefore, quenched disorder introduced by the randomness of the lattice is irrelevant and does not influence the character of the phase transitions. We report the critical points to considerable precision and, for the Ising model, also the first correction-to-scaling exponent.

Hydrodynamics of random-organizing hyperuniform fluids

Disordered hyperuniform structures are locally random while uniform like crystals at large length scales. Recently, an exotic hyperuniform fluid state was found in several nonequilibrium systems, while the underlying physics remains unknown. In this work, we propose a nonequilibrium (driven-dissipative) hard-sphere model and formulate a hydrodynamic theory based on Navier-Stokes equations to uncover the general mechanism of the fluidic hyperuniformity (HU). At a fixed density, this model system undergoes a smooth transition from an absorbing state to an active hyperuniform fluid and then, to the equilibrium fluid by changing the dissipation strength. We study the criticality of the absorbing-phase transition. We find that the origin of fluidic HU can be understood as the damping of a stochastic harmonic oscillator in q space, which indicates that the suppressed long-wavelength density fluctuation in the hyperuniform fluid can exhibit as either acoustic (resonance) mode or diffusive (overdamped) mode. Importantly, our theory reveals that the damping dissipation and active reciprocal interaction (driving) are the two ingredients for fluidic HU. Based on this principle, we further demonstrate how to realize the fluidic HU in an experimentally accessible active spinner system and discuss the possible realization in other systems.

Hydrodynamics, density fluctuations, and universality in conserved stochastic sandpiles

We study conserved stochastic sandpiles (CSSs), which exhibit an active-absorbing phase transition upon tuning density ρ. We demonstrate that a broad class of CSSs possesses a remarkable hydrodynamic structure: There is an Einstein relation σ^{2}(ρ)=χ(ρ)/D(ρ), which connects bulk-diffusion coefficient D(ρ), conductivity χ(ρ), and mass fluctuation, or scaled variance of subsystem mass, σ^{2}(ρ). Consequently, density large-deviations are governed by an equilibrium-like chemical potential μ(ρ)∼lna(ρ), where a(ρ) is the activity in the system. By using the above hydrodynamics, we derive two scaling relations: As Δ=(ρ-ρ_{c})→0^{+}, ρ_{c} being the critical density, (i) the mass fluctuation σ^{2}(ρ)∼Δ^{1-δ} with δ=0 and (ii) the dynamical exponent z=2+(β-1)/ν_{⊥}, expressed in terms of two static exponents β and ν_{⊥} for activity a(ρ)∼Δ^{β} and correlation length ξ∼Δ^{-ν_{⊥}}, respectively. Our results imply that conserved Manna sandpile, a well studied variant of the CSS, belongs to a distinct universality-not that of directed percolation (DP), which, without any conservation law as such, does not obey scaling relation (ii).

Hyperuniformity of initial conditions and critical decay of a diffusive epidemic process belonging to the Manna class

For a fixed-energy Manna sandpile model belonging to a Manna class in one dimension (d=1), we recently showed that the critical decay is different for random and regular initial conditions (ICs). Compared with previous results of natural IC for several models, we suggested for the Manna class that the critical decay depends on the characteristics of the three ICs. But the dependence on the random and regular ICs was shown only for a single model. In this work, we study the critical decay for the random and regular ICs for another model of the Manna class in d=1, a diffusive epidemic process. It is shown that the critical decay exponent agrees with the previous result for each IC, which verifies that IC dependence is a common feature of the Manna class. In addition, for the random and regular ICs, we measure the variance σ^{2}(r) of total particle density in a region of size r by increasing r up to system size and investigate its temporal evolution toward the value σ_{q}^{2}(r) of the quasisteady state at criticality. In d=1,σ^{2}(r) scales as σ^{2}(r)∼r^{-ψ} with ψ=1 for random distributions and 1<ψ≤2 for hyperuniform ones. The temporal evolution shows that σ^{2}(r) of the two ICs differently relax toward σ_{q}^{2}(r) and the regular IC becomes a hyperuniform distribution of ψ=2 in the beginning of the evolution. We estimate ψ=1.45(3) for both the quasisteady state and absorbing states, so the quasisteady state is also as hyperuniform as absorbing states. The hyperuniformity of the quasisteady state shows that the natural IC also should be hyperuniform as much as the quasisteady state, because the natural IC is obtained from particle configurations close to the quasisteady state. Consequently, the different ψ of the three ICs suggest that σ^{2}(r) can classify the characteristics of the three ICs in a unified way and the different degree of hyperuniformity of the ICs provides another explanation for the observed IC-dependent critical decay in a point of view of initial fluctuations and correlations.

Critical behavior for random initial conditions in the one-dimensional fixed-energy Manna sandpile model

A fixed-energy Manna sandpile model undergoes an absorbing phase transition at a critical ρ_{c}, where an order parameter ϕ(t) decays as t^{-α} in time t. As the prototype of the Manna class, the model has been extensively studied in one dimension. However, the previous estimates of ρ_{c} and some critical exponents are different, depending on the types of initial conditions; random, natural, and regular conditions. The estimates of ρ_{c} for the random and the regular conditions are the lower and the upper bound among currently known estimates, respectively. In this work, for the random conditions, ρ_{c} and α are measured by taking into account finite-size (FS) effects. At the previous estimate of ρ_{c}, simulation results show that the temporal decay of ϕ(t) is strongly affected by the FS effects up to much larger system size (∼10^{6}). For the sizes for which ϕ(t) is independent up to t=2×10^{7}, we estimate ρ_{c}=0.8925(1) and α=0.110(5), which clearly differ from the previous results for the random conditions, ρ_{c}=0.89199(5) and α=0.141(24). Instead, the present ρ_{c} agrees with ρ_{c}=0.89255(2) of the regular conditions. In addition, the present α is substantially distinguishable from the results of the other types of initial conditions, α=0.159(3) and 0.146(2) for the natural and the regular conditions, respectively, which supports the claim of the initial condition dependence of dynamical exponents in the Manna class.

Absence of absorbing phase transitions in a conserved lattice-gas model in one dimension

A one-dimensional conserved lattice-gas model is known to undergo continuous absorbing phase transitions where some of the critical exponents are exactly known. In one dimension, we recently showed that the model is mapped onto a two species reaction A+B→0 with diffusion rate of D_{A}>0 and D_{B}=0. In this work, it is explicitly shown from the scaling theory for A+B→0 that the observed scaling behavior of the conserved lattice-gas model is not associated with the absorbing phase transitions. Instead, the model indeed undergoes a crossover between two different scaling behaviors of A+B→0, the scaling behaviors of equal and unequal initial densities of two species. The crossover is similar to the absorbing transitions in many respects but some important features of continuous transitions such as the diverging fluctuations of an order parameter are absent.

Continuous and discontinuous absorbing-state phase transitions on Voronoi-Delaunay random lattices

We study absorbing-state phase transitions (APTs) in two-dimensional Voronoi-Delaunay (VD) random lattices with quenched coordination disorder. Quenched randomness usually changes the criticality and destroys discontinuous transitions in low-dimensional nonequilibrium systems. We performed extensive simulations of the Ziff-Gulari-Barshad model, and verified that the VD disorder does not change the nature of its discontinuous transition. Our results corroborate recent findings of Barghathi and Vojta [H. Barghathi and T. Vojta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 120602 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.113.120602], stating the irrelevance of topological disorder in a class of random lattices that includes VD, and raise the interesting possibility that disorder in nonequilibrium APT may, under certain conditions, be irrelevant for the phase coexistence. We also verify that the VD disorder is irrelevant for the critical behavior of models belonging to the directed percolation and Manna universality classes.

Absorbing phase transition in a conserved lattice gas model with next-nearest-neighbor hopping in one dimension

The absorbing phase transition of the modified conserved lattice gas (m-CLG) model was investigated in one dimension. The m-CLG model was modified from the conserved lattice gas (CLG) model in such a way that each active particle hops to one of the nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor empty sites. The order parameter exponent, the dynamic exponent, and the correlation length exponent were estimated from the power-law behavior and finite-size scaling of the active particle densities. The exponents were found to differ considerably from those of the ordinary CLG model and were also distinct from those of the Manna model, suggesting that next-nearest-neighbor hopping is a relevant factor that alters the critical behavior in the one-dimensional CLG model.

Critical behavior of a fixed-energy Manna sandpile model for regular initial conditions in one dimension

For a fixed-energy (FE) Manna sandpile model in one dimension, we investigate the critical behavior for regular initial conditions in which activities are distributed at regular intervals on average. The FE Manna model conserves the density ρ of total particles and undergoes an absorbing phase transition at a critical ρ(c). For the regular initial conditions, we show via extensive simulations that the dynamical scaling behaviors differ from those of the random and the natural initial conditions. Off-critical scaling exponents β and ν(⊥) are also measured and shown to agree well with the values of the directed percolation (DP) class as reported by Basu et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 015702 (2012)]. Our results suggest that the dynamical scaling behaviors depend on the characteristics of initial conditions, but the off-critical scaling behaviors in the steady state are independent of initial conditions and belong to the DP class.

Particle-density fluctuations and universality in the conserved stochastic sandpile

We examine fluctuations in particle density in the restricted-height, conserved stochastic sandpile (CSS). In this and related models, the global particle density is a temperaturelike control parameter. Thus local fluctuations in this density correspond to disorder; if this disorder is a relevant perturbation of directed percolation (DP), then the CSS should exhibit non-DP critical behavior. We analyze the scaling of the variance Vℓ of the number of particles in regions of ℓd sites in extensive simulations of the quasistationary state in one and two dimensions. Our results, combined with a Harris-like argument for the relevance of particle-density fluctuations, strongly suggest that conserved stochastic sandpiles belong to a universality class distinct from that of DP.

Exact mapping of the stochastic field theory for Manna sandpiles to interfaces in random media

We show that the stochastic field theory for directed percolation in the presence of an additional conservation law [the conserved directed-percolation (C-DP) class] can be mapped exactly to the continuum theory for the depinning of an elastic interface in short-range correlated quenched disorder. Along one line of the parameters commonly studied, this mapping leads to the simplest overdamped dynamics. Away from this line, an additional memory term arises in the interface dynamics; we argue that this does not change the universality class. Since C-DP is believed to describe the Manna class of self-organized criticality, this shows that Manna stochastic sandpiles and disordered elastic interfaces (i.e., the quenched Edwards-Wilkinson model) share the same universal large-scale behavior.

Crossover from rotational to stochastic sandpile universality in the random rotational sandpile model

In the rotational sandpile model, either the clockwise or the anticlockwise toppling rule is assigned to all the lattice sites. It has all the features of a stochastic sandpile model but belongs to a different universality class than the Manna class. A crossover from rotational to Manna universality class is studied by constructing a random rotational sandpile model and assigning randomly clockwise and anticlockwise rotational toppling rules to the lattice sites. The steady state and the respective critical behavior of the present model are found to have a strong and continuous dependence on the fraction of the lattice sites having the anticlockwise (or clockwise) rotational toppling rule. As the anticlockwise and clockwise toppling rules exist in equal proportions, it is found that the model reproduces critical behavior of the Manna model. It is then further evidence of the existence of the Manna class, in contradiction with some recent observations of the nonexistence of the Manna class.

Effects of random initial conditions on the dynamical scaling behaviors of a fixed-energy Manna sandpile model in one dimension

For a fixed-energy (FE) Manna sandpile model in one dimension, we investigate the effects of random initial conditions on the dynamical scaling behavior of an order parameter. In the FE Manna model, the density ρ of total particles is conserved, and an absorbing phase transition occurs at ρ(c) as ρ varies. In this work, we show that, for a given ρ, random initial distributions of particles lead to the domain structure in which domains with particle densities higher and lower than ρ(c) alternate with each other. In the domain structure, the dominant length scale is the average domain length, which increases via the coalescence of adjacent domains. At ρ(c), the domain structure slows down the decay of an order parameter and also causes anomalous finite-size effects, i.e., power-law decay followed by an exponential one before the quasisteady state. As a result, the interplay of particle conservation and random initial conditions causes the domain structure, which is the origin of the anomalous dynamical scaling behaviors for random initial conditions.

Universality class of the conserved Manna model in one dimension

The nonequilibrium absorbing phase transition of the discrete conserved Manna model was studied via Monte Carlo simulations on a one-dimensional chain, using the natural initial states with a sequential update. The critical density of the particles was found to be smaller than the recently reported value, and the order-parameter exponent was considerably different from the directed percolation (DP) value. The influence of quenched disorder was also studied on a diluted strip of L_{x}×L_{y} lattice sites with L_{x}≫L_{y}, and the results were compared with those of the contact process (CP). It was found that the Manna model and the CP exhibited distinctly different behaviors; the CP exhibited nonuniversal power-law decreases of active-site densities in the Griffith phase, whereas the Manna model showed a standard critical behavior. These results consistently suggest that the Manna model belongs to a universality class that is different from the DP class.

Critical behavior of absorbing phase transitions for models in the Manna class with natural initial states

The critical behavior of absorbing phase transitions for two typical models in the Manna universality class, the conserved Manna model and the conserved lattice gas model, both on a square lattice, was investigated using the natural initial states. Various critical exponents were estimated using the static and dynamic simulations. The exponents characterizing dynamics of active particles differ considerably from the known exponents obtained using the random initial states, whereas those associated with the steady-state quantities remain the same. The critical exponents for both models were consistent with errors of less than 1% and satisfied the known scaling relations; thus, the known violation of scaling relations for models with a conserved field was resolved using the natural initial states. The results differed by 7%∼12% from the directed percolation values.

Contact processes in crowded environments

Periodically sheared colloids at low densities demonstrate a dynamical phase transition from an inactive to active phase as the strain amplitude is increased. The inactive phase consists of no collisions (contacts) between particles in the steady state limit, while in the active phase collisions persist. To investigate this system at higher densities, we construct and study a conserved-particle-number contact process with three-body interactions, which are potentially more likely than two-body interactions at higher densities. For example, consider one active (diffusing) particle colliding with two inactive (nondiffusing) particles such that they become active and consider spontaneous inactivation. In mean field, this system exhibits a continuous dynamical phase transition. Simulations on square lattices also indicate a continuous transition with exponents similar to those measured for the conserved lattice gas (CLG) model. In contrast, the three-body interaction requiring two active particles to activate one inactive particle exhibits a discontinuous transition. Finally, inspired by kinetically constrained models of the glass transition, we investigate the "caging effect" at even higher particle densities to look for a second dynamical phase transition back to an inactive phase. Square lattice simulations suggest a continuous transition with a new set of exponents differing from both the CLG model and what is known as directed percolation, indicating a potentially new universality class for a contact process with a conserved particle number.