Patterning and ordering in driven alloys with coupled conserved and nonconserved order parameters

We study an alloy system with coupled conserved and nonconserved order parameters driven by ballistic jumps with finite range. The dynamical stabilization of nonequilibrium steady states is investigated by using a mean-field kinetic model and kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. We show that alloys that decompose at a macroscopic scale at equilibrium can be stabilized into three additional steady states: homogeneous and disordered, homogeneous and ordered, or ordered and decomposed in mesoscopic patterns. Consequences for the synthesis of nanocomposites by energetic ion beams are discussed.