Driven Diffusive Systems with Disorder

Abstract

We discuss recent work on the static and dynamical properties of the asymmetric exclusion process, generalized to include the effect of disorder. We study in turn: random disorder in the properties of particles; disorder in the spatial distribution of transition rates, both with a single easy direction and with random reversals of the easy direction; dynamical disorder, where particles move in a disordered landscape which itself evolves in time. In every case, the system exhibits phase separation; in some cases, it is of an unusual sort. The time-dependent properties of density fluctuations are in accord with the kinematic wave criterion that the dynamical universality class is unaffected by disorder if the kinematic wave velocity is nonzero.