Exploring percolative landscapes: Infinite cascades of geometric phase transitions.

Abstract

The evolution of many kinetic processes in 1+1 (space-time) dimensions results in 2D directed percolative landscapes. The active phases of these models possess numerous hidden geometric orders characterized by various types of large-scale and/or coarse-grained percolative backbones that we define. For the patterns originated in the classical directed percolation (DP) and contact process we show from the Monte Carlo simulation data that these percolative backbones emerge at specific critical points as a result of continuous phase transitions. These geometric transitions belong to the DP universality class and their nonlocal order parameters are the capacities of corresponding backbones. The multitude of conceivable percolative backbones implies the existence of infinite cascades of such geometric transitions in the kinetic processes considered. We present simple arguments to support the conjecture that such cascades of transitions are a generic feature of percolation as well as of many other transitions with nonlocal order parameters.