Non-equilibrium 2D Ising model with stationary uphill diffusion (1708.00751v3)

Abstract: Usually, in a non-equilibrium setting, a current brings mass from the highest density regions to the lowest density ones. Although rare, the opposite phenomenon (known as "uphill diffusion") has also been observed in multicomponent systems, where it appears as an artificial effect of the interaction among components. We show here that uphill diffusion can be a substantial effect, i.e. it may occur even in single component systems as a consequence of some external work. To this aim we consider the 2D ferromagnetic Ising model in contact with two reservoirs that fix, at the left and the right boundaries, magnetizations of the same magnitude but of opposite signs. We provide numerical evidence that a class of non-equilibrium steady states exists in which, by tuning the reservoir magnetizations, the current in the system changes from "downhill" to "uphill". Moreover, we also show that, in such non-equilibrium set-up, the current vanishes precisely when the reservoir magnetizations equal the magnetization of the corresponding equilibrium dynamics, thus establishing a novel relation between equilibrium and non-equilibrium properties.