Directed Percolation and Critical Phenomena in Reaction-Diffusion Systems - Lecture 1

Explore a comprehensive lecture on directed percolation (DP) delivered by Professor Mike Cates from the University of Cambridge as part of the Anti-diffusive dynamics series. Delve into the significance of DP models and their shared behaviors, particularly focusing on critical phenomena characterized by universal exponents. Learn about the famous conjecture regarding the DP universality class and its application to turbulence onset through puff proliferation. Examine both discrete models and coarse-grained approaches using stochastic PDEs, understanding critical exponents in various spatial dimensions and the role of renormalization group (RG) in explaining universality. Discover the distinction between different DP variations, including parity-conserving DP with two absorbing states and conserved DP with infinite absorbing states, while gaining insights into models that appear similar to DP but belong to different universality classes.