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Finger Formation In A Driven Diffusive System, D. H. Boal, Beate Schmittmann, R. K. P. Zia

Beate Schmittmann

A driven diffusive lattice gas is studied in a rectangular geometry: particles are fed in at one side and extracted at the other, after being swept through the system by a uniform driving field. Being periodic in the transverse direction, the lattice lies on the surface of a cylinder. The resulting nonequilibrium steady state depends strongly on this choice of boundary conditions. Both Monte Carlo and analytic techniques are employed to investigate the structure of typical configurations, the density profile, the steady-state current, and the nearest-neighbor correlations. As the temperature is lowered in a finite system, the simulations indicate a …