Latent heat and the Fourier law

TL;DR

This paper uses computer simulations of a stochastic cellular automaton to study phase transitions and heat flow in one-dimensional particle systems connected to reservoirs with different densities.

Contribution

It introduces a model that captures phase transition behavior and metastability in particle systems, revealing non-intuitive current flow directions.

Findings

Observation of metastable states with phase transition behavior.

Current flows from lower to higher density reservoirs in certain regimes.

System reaches a stationary regime after transient dynamics.

Abstract

We present computer simulations run with a stochastic cellular automaton which describes $d=1$ particle systems connected to reservoirs which keep two different densities at the endpoints. We fix the parameters so that there is a phase transition (of the van der Waals type) and observe that if the densities at the boundaries are metastable then, after a transient, the system reaches an apparently stationary regime where the current flows from the reservoir with smaller density to the one with larger density.