Bethe Ansatz calculation of the spectral gap of the asymmetric exclusion process

We present a new derivation of the spectral gap of the totally asymmetric exclusion process on a half-filled ring of size L by using the Bethe Ansatz. We show that, in the large L limit, the Bethe equations reduce to a simple transcendental equation involving the polylogarithm, a classical special function. By solving that equation, the gap and the dynamical exponent are readily obtained. Our method can be extended to a system with an arbitrary density of particles. Keywords: ASEP, Bethe Ansatz, Dynamical Exponent, Spectral Gap

Current Fluctuations in the exclusion process and Bethe Ansatz

We use the Bethe Ansatz to derive analytical expressions for the current statistics in the asymmetric exclusion process with both forward and backward jumps. The Bethe equations are highly coupled and this fact has impeded their use to derive exact results for finite systems. We overcome this technical difficulty by a reformulation of the Bethe equations into a one variable polynomial problem, akin to the functional Bethe Ansatz. The perturbative solution of this equation leads to the cumulants of the current. We calculate here the first two orders and derive exact formulae for the mean value of the current and its fluctuations.Comment: 17 page

The asymmetric simple exclusion process: an integrable model for non-equilibrium statistical mechanics

The asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) plays the role of a paradigm in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. We review exact results for the ASEP obtained by Bethe ansatz and put emphasis on the algebraic properties of this model. The Bethe equations for the eigenvalues of the Markov matrix of the ASEP are derived from the algebraic Bethe ansatz. Using these equations we explain how to calculate the spectral gap of the model and how global spectral properties such as the existence of multiplets can be predicted. An extension of the Bethe ansatz leads to an analytic expression for the large deviation function of the current in the ASEP that satisfies the Gallavotti-Cohen relation. Finally, we describe some variants of the ASEP that are also solvable by Bethe ansatz. Keywords: ASEP, integrable models, Bethe ansatz, large deviations.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, published in the "special issue on recent advances in low-dimensional quantum field theories", P. Dorey, G. Dunne and J. Feinberg editor

Some Exact Results for the Exclusion Process

The asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP) is a paradigm for non-equilibrium physics that appears as a building block to model various low-dimensional transport phenomena, ranging from intracellular traffic to quantum dots. We review some recent results obtained for the system on a periodic ring by using the Bethe Ansatz. We show that this method allows to derive analytically many properties of the dynamics of the model such as the spectral gap and the generating function of the current. We also discuss the solution of a generalized exclusion process with $N$-species of particles and explain how a geometric construction inspired from queuing theory sheds light on the Matrix Product Representation technique that has been very fruitful to derive exact results for the ASEP.Comment: 21 pages; Proceedings of STATPHYS24 (Cairns, Australia, July 2010