Dynamical origin of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a field-driven nonequilibrium system

Richard D. Willmann, Gunter M. Schuetz, Stefan Grosskinsky

Published 2005-04-21, updated 2018-04-25Version 2

A one-dimensional driven two-species model with parallel sublattice update and open boundaries is considered. Although the microscopic many-body dynamics is symmetric with respect to the two species and interactions are short-ranged, there is a region in parameter space with broken symmetry in the steady state. The sublattice update is deterministic in the bulk and allows for a detailed analysis of the relaxation dynamics, so that symmetry breaking can be shown to be the result of an amplification mechanism of fluctuations. In contrast to previously considered models, this leads to a proof for spontaneous symmetry breaking which is valid throughout the whole region in parameter space with a symmetry broken steady state.