Freezing by heating in a driven mesoscopic System

We investigate a simple model corresponding to particles driven in opposite directions and interacting via a repulsive potential. The particles move off-lattice on a periodic strip and are subject to random fords as well. We show that this model-which can be considered as a continuum version of some driven diffusive systems-exhibits a paradoxical, new kind of transition called here freezing by heating. One interesting feature of this transition is that a crystallized stare with a higher total energy is obtained from a fluid state by increasing the amount of fluctuations.