Dynamic transition in deposition with a poisoning species

TL;DR

This paper investigates a deposition process with a poisoning species, revealing a phase transition to a blocked state characterized by directed percolation universality, with implications for real system behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a ballistic-like deposition model demonstrating a transition from growth to pinning, linking it to the directed percolation class and analyzing interface scaling behaviors.

Findings

Transition to a blocked phase is in the directed percolation class.

Interface width exhibits crossover from critical to KPZ scaling.

Scaling laws for maximum heights and widths near the transition.

Abstract

In deposition with a poisoning species, we show that the transition to a blocked or pinned phase may be viewed as an absorbing transition in the directed percolation (DP) class. We consider a ballistic-like deposition model with an active and an inactive species that represents its basic features and exhibits a transition from a growing phase to a blocked or pinned phase, with the deposition rate as the order parameter. In the growing phase, the interface width shows a crossover from the critical W ~ t behavior to Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) scaling, which involves DP and KPZ exponents in the saturation regime. In the pinned phase, the maximum heights and widths scale as H_s ~ W_s ~ (p-p_c)^{nu_//}. The robustness of the DP class suggests investigations in real systems.