%0 Journal Article
%T Quenched disorder forbids discontinuous transitions in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems
%A Paula Villa Martšªn
%A Juan A. Bonachela
%A Miguel A. Mu£¿oz
%J Physics
%D 2014
%I arXiv
%R 10.1103/PhysRevE.89.012145
%X Quenched disorder affects significantly the behavior of phase transitions. The Imry-Ma-Aizenman-Wehr-Berker argument prohibits first-order or discontinuous transitions and their concomitant phase coexistence in low-dimensional equilibrium systems in the presence of random fields. Instead, discontinuous transitions become rounded or even continuous once disorder is introduced. Here we show that phase coexistence and first-order phase transitions are also precluded in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems with quenched disorder: discontinuous transitions in two-dimensional systems with absorbing states become continuous in the presence of quenched disorder. We also study the universal features of this disorder-induced criticality and find them to be compatible with the universality class of the directed percolation with quenched disorder. Thus, we conclude that first-order transitions do not exist in low-dimensional disordered systems, not even in genuinely nonequilibrium systems with absorbing states.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.1406v1