Disordering effects of color in nonequilibrium phase transitions induced by multiplicative noise

The model introduced by Van den Broeck, Parrondo, and Toral [Phys. Rev. Lett. 73, 3595 (1994)]-leading to a second-order-like noise-induced nonequilibrium phase transition which shows reentrance as a function of the (multiplicative) noise intensity sigma-is investigated beyond the white-noise assumption. Through a Markovian approximation and within a mean-field treatment it is found that, in striking contrast with the usual behavior for equilibrium phase transitions, for noise self-correlation time tau > 0, the stable phase for (diffusive) spatial coupling D --> infinity is always the disordered one. Another surprising result is that a large noise ''memory'' also tends to destroy order. These results are supported by numerical simulations.