Emergent Competition Between Dynamical Channels in Nonequilibrium Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a new rejection-free kinetic Monte Carlo method to study systems with multiple dynamical mechanisms, revealing how competing dynamics can alter phase behavior and critical properties.

Contribution

The authors introduce a self-consistent framework for analyzing systems with multiple dynamical channels, demonstrating its impact on nonequilibrium phase diagrams and critical phenomena.

Findings

Coexistence of dynamics reshapes the phase diagram.

Phase boundary follows a power-law near zero temperature.

Transition types vary with temperature, from continuous to Ising universality.

Abstract

We introduce a rejection-free continuous-time kinetic Monte Carlo framework to study stochastic systems governed by multiple concurrent dynamical mechanisms. In this approach, the relative activity of each dynamical channel emerges self-consistently from the instantaneous configuration through its transition rates. As an illustration, we investigate a driven antiferromagnetic Ising model on a square lattice combining conservative Katz-Lebowitz-Spohn exchanges and nonconserving Glauber single-spin flips. We show that the coexistence of these dynamics qualitatively reshapes the nonequilibrium phase diagram in the temperature-field plane, stabilizing antiferromagnetic order in regions where the driving field would otherwise destroy it. Near the zero-temperature limit, the phase boundary follows a power-law scaling $T\sim|E-E_c|$ with an exponent close to unity. At intermediate temperatures, the transition belongs to the two-dimensional Ising universality class, while at low temperatures it remains continuous, with the order-parameter exponent approaching zero. Our results demonstrate that allowing competing dynamical channels to coevolve with the system can fundamentally alter its critical properties, revealing collective behavior hidden in single-dynamics descriptions.