Eur. Phys. J. B 43, 73-79 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00029-3

Generic two-phase coexistence in nonequilibrium systems

¹ Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
² Departamento de Física da Faculdade de Ciências e Centro de Física Teórica e Computacional da Universidade de Lisboa, Avenida Professor Gama Pinto, 2, P-1649-003 Lisboa Codex, Portugal

Corresponding author: ^a mamunoz@onsager.ugr.es

Received: 9 August 2004
Revised: 21 October 2004
Published online: 11 February 2005

Abstract

A beautifully simple model introduced a couple of decades ago, Toom's cellular automaton, revealed that non-equilibrium systems may exhibit generic bistability, i.e. two-phase coexistence over a finite area of the (two-dimensional) phase diagram, in violation of the equilibrium Gibbs phase rule. In this paper we analyse two interfacial models, describing more realistic situations, that share with Toom's model a phase diagram with a broad region of phase coexistence. An analysis of the interfacial models yields conditions for generic bistability in terms of physically relevant parameters that may be controlled experimentally.