Disordering Effects of Color in Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions Induced by Multiplicative Noise

The model introduced by Van den Broeck, Parrondo, and Toral [Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 3395 (1994)]—leading to a second-order-like noise-induced nonequilibrium phase transition which shows reentrance as a function of the (multiplicative) noise intensity σ—is investigated beyond the white-noise assumption. Through a Markovian approximation and within a mean-field treatment it is found that, in striking contrast with the usual behavior for equilibrium phase transitions, for noise self-correlation time τ>0, the stable phase for (diffusive) spatial coupling D→∞ is always the disordered one. Another surprising result is that a large noise “memory” also tends to destroy order. These results are supported by numerical simulations.