Effects of violating detailed balance on critical dynamics

We present an overview of the effects of detailed-balance violating perturbations on the universal static and dynamic scaling behavior near a critical point. It is demonstrated that the standard critical dynamics universality classes are generally quite robust: In systems with nonconserved order parameter, detailed balance is effectively restored at criticality. This also holds for models with conserved order parameter, and isotropic nonequilibrium perturbations. Genuinely novel features are found only for models with conserved order parameter and spatially anisotropic noise correlations.