Hysteresis of transient populations in absorbing-state systems.

A nonequilibrium density matrix theory is used in order to explicitly describe the hysteresis interrelation between populations of nonstationary states in an absorbing multi-stage chain system in the one-particle approximation. As an illustrative example, we restrict ourselves to consideration of the 3-stage absorbing case for which we identify three types of the hysteresis; that is, the causal time dependent hysteresis with leaf-like and triangle-like closed loops, the hidden hysteresis with broken-line loops and the true hysteresis with open loops. Furthermore, we observe a common critical threshold for the hysteresis types and ascertain a reciprocal correspondence of this threshold as between the types as well with the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]