Entropic contributions in Langevin equations for anisotropic driven systems

We report on analytical results for a series of anisotropic driven systems in the context of a recently proposed Langevin equation approach. In a recent paper (P.L. Garrido et al., Phys. Rev. E 61 (2000) R4683) we have pointed out that entropic contributions, over-looked in previous works, are crucial in order to obtain suitable Langevin descriptions of driven lattice gases. Here, we present a more detailed derivation and justification of the entropic term for the standard driven lattice gas, and also we extend the improved approach to other anisotropic driven systems, namely: (i) the randomly driven lattice gas, (ii) the two-temperature model and, (iii) the bi-layer lattice gas. It is shown that the two-temperature model and the lattice gas driven either by a random field or by an uniform infinite one are members of the same universality class. When the drive is uniform and finite the ‘standard’ theory is recovered. A Langevin equation describing the phenomenology of the bi-layer lattice gas is also presented.