This book presents experimental studies of nonequilibrium phase transitions induced by ac and dc forces in collectively interacting systems—a superconducting vortex system with random pinning. It first shows that a phase transition from reversible to irreversible flow occurs by increasing vortex density as well as amplitude of ac shear, which is indicative of the universality of the reversible-irreversible transition. Two distinct flow regimes are also found in the reversible phase. Next, the book presents new methods for dc driven experiments—transverse mode-locking and transverse current-voltage measurements—and provides convincing evidence of the second-order dynamical transition from disordered plastic to anisotropically ordered smectic flow. Lastly it reports on the first experimental demonstration of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for the nonequilibrium phase transition.

The experimental results indicate that both the reversible-irreversible transition and the dynamical ordering transition belong to the directed percolation universality class which is one of the fundamental classes of nonequilibrium phase transitions. Hence, the findings will be generalized to other nonequilibrium systems and stimulate research on nonequilibrium physics.