Abstract
Models undergoing a phase transition to an absorbing state weakly broken by the addition of a very low spontaneous nucleation rate are shown to exhibit hysteresis loops whose width depends algebraically on the ramp rate . Analytical arguments and numerical simulations show that with , where is the critical exponent governing the survival probability of a seed near threshold. These results explain similar hysteresis scaling observed before in liquid crystal convection experiments. This phenomenon is conjectured to occur in a variety of other experimental systems.
- Received 22 October 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.77.030103
©2008 American Physical Society