Self-organizing domain structure in a driven lattice gas

Abstract

Instead of the homogeneous ordered particle distributions characteristic to equilibrium systems a self-organizing polydomain structure is found to be stable at low temperatures in a square lattice-gas model with repulsive nearest neighbor interaction when the particle jumps are biased by a uniform electric field. We have performed Monte Carlo simulations to study the domain structure varying the temperatures, fields and system sizes. Revision of the traditional picture on this system raises interesting problems as discussed.