A diffusive system driven by a battery or by a smoothly varying field

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Abstract: We consider the steady state of a one dimensional diffusive system, such as the symmetric simple exclusion process (SSEP) on a ring, driven by a battery at the origin or by a smoothly varying field along the ring. The battery appears as the limiting case of a smoothly varying field, when the field becomes a delta function at the origin. We find that in the scaling limit, the long range pair correlation functions of the system driven by a battery turn out to be very different from the ones known in the steady state of the SSEP maintained out of equilibrium by contact with two reservoirs, even when the steady state density profiles are identical in both models.


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.











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