Symmetric exclusion as a random environment: hydrodynamic limits (Q500796)

The authors study random walks on the one-dimensional integer lattice~\(\mathbb{Z}\), where the transition rates vary according to a simple symmetric exclusion process~\(\eta_t\) on \(\mathbb{Z}\). More precisely, the random walk jumps to the left with rate \(\alpha\) and to the right with rate \(\beta\) if the same position in~\(\eta_t\) is empty; if a particle is sitting on that position of~\(\eta_t\), then the transition rates are reversed. This model creates trapping phenomena at the boundary between populated and empty regions of~\(\eta_t\). Hence they are dealing with a random walk in a slowly non-uniform mixing dynamic random environment. As the main result, the authors prove a hydrodynamic limit theorem for the exclusion as seen by the walk. Moreover, a differential equation for the macroscopic evolution of the random walk limit is presented. For these purposes, time and space are scaled by \(N\) in time and by \(1/N\) in space, in contrast to the commonly used \(N^2\) and \(1/N\) scaling. Finally, some variants of this model are also treated.