Finite-scale singularity in the renormalization group flow of a reaction-diffusion system

Damien Gredat (1) , Hugues Chaté (1, 2) , Ivan Dornic (1) , Bertrand Delamotte (2)

1 SPEC - UMR3680 - Service de physique de l'état condensé
2 LPTMC - Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matière Condensée

We study the nonequilibrium critical behavior of the pair contact process with diffusion (PCPD) by means of nonperturbative functional renormalization group techniques. We show that usual perturbation theory fails because the effective potential develops a nonanalyticity at a finite length scale: Perturbatively forbidden terms are dynamically generated and the flow can be continued once they are taken into account. Our results suggest that the critical behavior of PCPD can be either in the directed percolation or in a new (conjugated) universality class.

Domains: Physics [physics]

Damien Gredat, Hugues Chaté, Ivan Dornic, Bertrand Delamotte. Finite-scale singularity in the renormalization group flow of a reaction-diffusion system. Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2014, 89 (1), pp.10102. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.89.010102⟩. ⟨cea-01384210⟩