A Lattice Gas Coupled to Two Thermal Reservoirs: Monte Carlo and Field Theoretic Studies

Abstract

We investigate the collective behavior of an Ising lattice gas, driven to non-equilibrium steady states by being coupled to {\em two} thermal baths. Monte Carlo methods are applied to a two-dimensional system in which one of the baths is fixed at infinite temperature. Both generic long range correlations in the disordered state and critical poperties near the second order transition are measured. Anisotropic scaling, a key feature near criticality, is used to extract $T_{c}$ and some critical exponents. On the theoretical front, a continuum theory, in the spirit of Landau-Ginzburg, is presented. Being a renormalizable theory, its predictions can be computed by standard methods of $\epsilon $-expansions and found to be consistent with simulation data. In particular, the critical behavior of this system belongs to a universality class which is quite {\em different} from the uniformly driven Ising model.