Background field functional renormalization group for absorbing state phase transitions

We present a functional renormalization group approach for the active to inactive phase transition in directed percolation-type systems, in which the transition is approached from the active, finite density phase. By expanding the effective potential for the density field around its minimum, we obtain a background field action functional, which serves as a starting point for the functional renormalization group approach. Due to the presence of the background field, the corresponding nonperturbative flow equations yield remarkably good estimates for the critical exponents of the directed percolation universality class, even in low dimensions.