A diffusive system driven by a battery or by a smoothly varying field (Q5961869)

The authors consider the simple symmetric exclusion process (SSEP) on a ring with a ``battery'' as well as with a smoothly varying field. More precisely, consider the exclusion process on the discrete torus \(\mathbb{Z}/(N)\) of size \(N\) and let \(M\) particles perform a random walk on the torus with transition rates \(p_i\) and \(q_i\) for a jump from \(i\) to \(i+1\) and for a jump from \(i\) to \(i-1\), respectively. Only one particle is allowed at each site and jumps to occupied sites are suppressed. In the battery model, we have \(p_i=q_i=1\) for all \(i\), except for \(p_N\) and \(q_1\). That is, the dynamics is that of SSEP except for the bond \((N,1)\) that is being thought of as maintaining a chemical potential (the battery). This model is closely related to the ``open'' linear model on \(\{1,\ldots,N\}\) where the sites \(1\) and \(N\) are in contact with particle reservoirs. In the smooth case, \(p_i=1+N^{-1}E(i/N)\) and \(q_i=1-N^{-1}E(i/N)\) for some smooth field \(E\) of period \(1\). The battery model appears as the limit of this model as \(E\) approaches a delta function at the origin. The authors investigate the non-equilibrium steady states (NESS) of the battery model as \(N\to\infty\) and \(M/N\to \bar\varrho\in(0,1)\). They show that the long range pair correlations differ significantly from those of the open model with reservoirs -- even if the parameters are chosen such that the density profiles are identical.