Microcanonical analysis of a nonequilibrium phase transition

Abstract

Microcanonical analysis is a powerful method for studying phase transitions of finite-size systems. This method has been used so far only for studying phase transitions of equilibrium systems, which can be described by microcanonical entropy. I show that it is possible to perform microcanonical analysis of a nonequilibrium phase transition, by generalizing the concept of microcanonical entropy. One-dimensional asymmetric diffusion process is studied as an example where such a generalized entropy can be explicitly found, and the microcanonical method is used to analyze a nonequilibrium phase transition of a finite-size system.