Next week's seminar

[CM ICTP - Trieste]

CONDENSED MATTER AND STATISTICAL PHYSICS SECTION
	
INFORMAL SEMINAR on   Disorder and strong electron correlations




Thursday, 26 October    -    11:00 a.m.




Room 239,  Main Bldg.- II floor




A. GAMBASSI    ( Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart )



" Non-equilibrium critical behaviours in driven diffusive systems "


Abstract


Many physical systems in equilibrium undergo phase transitions when the 
external control parameters (such as temperature, pressure, etc)  
approach certain values.  Among these transitions, critical phenomena 
are characterized by an emerging collective behaviour - on a scale much 
larger than the microscopic one - and by a certain degree of 
universality:  different physical systems may display the same critical 
behaviour.  This allows one to study such phenomena via extremely 
simplified models.  The lattice gas (equivalent to the Ising model) was 
introduced to study the liquid-vapour transition and played a primary 
role in the development of the theory of equilibrium phase transitions 
and collective critical phenomena.
In this talk I discuss how the critical behaviour of the lattice gas is 
affected by those external forces which drive the model into 
non-equilibrium steady states.