Hysteresis of transient populations in absorbing-state systems

•Three types of hysteresis are observed for a three-stage absorbing system.•Hysteresis types are described analytically and depicted graphically.•Threshold for switching between forms of hysteresis loops is found.

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.

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