Quenched disorder forbids discontinuous transitions in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems
Quenched disorder forbids discontinuous transitions in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems
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 …