9419393 Schmittmann Though there has been significant recent progress in the understanding of the co-operative behavior of driven diffusive systems, a host of new questions and surprising discoveries have also appeared. These puzzling issues will be addressed, from readily achievable goals to long-term projects. The former include (i) continued studies of uniformly and randomly driven systems, focusing on global features of the phase diagram and detailed properties like critical singularities, (ii) further exploration of multi-species and multi-layer systems, and (iii) theoretical understanding of interfacial instabilities and anomalous correlations. The latter is concerned with some fundamental questions, e.g., methods for simulating quenched impurities in finite systems with global currents, the existence of essential singularities at first order transitions far from equilibrium, and the role of detailed balance. %%% An exciting and rapidly expanding area in condensed matter physics is the study of complex co-operative behavior in systems driven far from equilibrium. Prominent examples include self-organized critically and driven diffusive systems. Since non-equilibrium phenomena are abundant in nature, it is clearly important that they be well understood, both in terms of theoretical foundations and practical applications. A promising approach consists of investigating simple models which retain the essential characteristics of these systems. Using an interplay of computer simulations and analytic methods, specific studies on such models is proposed, with a view to a wide range of potential applications, e.g., gel electrophoresis, intercalation processes, flow patterns of granular materials or traffic, flux creep in superconductors, biased diffusion on surfaces, and the dynamics of fracture.
