Scaling of the entropy production rate in a $\varphi^4$ model of Active Matter

TL;DR

This paper investigates how entropy production scales near criticality in an active $$ model, revealing that irrelevant parameters induce irreversibility despite the irrelevance of nonequilibrium terms at the critical point.

Contribution

It demonstrates that an irrelevant timescale parameter causes irreversibility in the critical dynamics of an active $$ model, despite the irrelevance of nonequilibrium terms at criticality.

Findings

Entropy production rate scales nontrivially near the critical point.

Irrelevant parameter $ au$ induces irreversibility at criticality.

Critical exponents remain in the Ising universality class.

Abstract

In active $\varphi^4$ field theories the nonequilibrium terms play an important role in describing active phase separation; however, they are irrelevant, in the renormalization group sense, at the critical point. Their irrelevance makes the critical exponents the same as those of the Ising universality class. Despite their irrelevance, they contribute to a nontrivial scaling of the entropy production rate at criticality. We consider the nonequilibrium dynamics of a nonconserved scalar field $\varphi$ (Model A) driven out-of-equilibrium by a persistent noise that is correlated on a finite timescale $\tau$, as in the case of active baths. We perform the computation of the density of entropy production rate $\sigma$ and we study its scaling near the critical point. We find that similar to the case of active Model A, and although the nonlinearities responsible for nonvanishing entropy production rates in the two models are quite different, the irrelevant parameter $\tau$ makes the critical dynamics irreversible.