Disorder-induced critical behavior in driven diffusive systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quenched random drift influences critical behavior in driven diffusive systems, revealing new universality classes and phase transitions, with results aligning with natural river network data.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamic renormalization group analysis of disorder effects, identifying novel fixed points and critical phenomena in driven diffusive systems.

Findings

Discovery of new universality classes of disorder-dominated criticality

Identification of a continuous phase transition at a specific disorder variance

Scaling exponents match those observed in natural river networks

Abstract

Using dynamic renormalization group we study the transport in driven diffusive systems in the presence of quenched random drift velocity with long-range correlations along the transport direction. In dimensions $d\mathopen< 4$ we find fixed points representing novel universality classes of disorder-dominated self-organized criticality, and a continuous phase transition at a critical variance of disorder. Numerical values of the scaling exponents characterizing the distributions of relaxation clusters are in good agreement with the exponents measured in natural river networks.