Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 42: Critical Phenomena and Phase Transitions II

DY 42.7: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2006, 12:30–13:00, H\"UL 186

Universal scaling behavior of non-equilibrium phase transitions — •Sven Lübeck — Theoretische Physik, Universität Duisburg-Essen, 47048 Duisburg

In contrast to equilibrium, a complete classification of the universal scaling behavior of non-equilibrium critical phenomena is still lacking. Thus the rich and often surprising variety of non-equilibrium phase transition has to be studied for each system individually. Here, we discuss the critical behavior of several systems exhibiting continuous phase transitions into absorbing states. By measuring certain universal scaling functions the systems can be grouped into universality classes, similar to equilibrium. It is the aim of this work to demonstrate the usefulness of universal scaling functions for the analysis non-equilibrium phase transitions. Determining the universal behavior it is often a more accurate test to consider scaling functions rather than the values of the critical exponents. While for the latter ones the variations between different universality classes are often tiny the scaling functions usually differ significantly. Additionally to the manifestation of universality classes, universal scaling functions are useful in order to check renormalization group results quantitatively.