Bottlenecks, i.e. local reductions of capacity, are one of the most relevant
scenarios of traffic systems. The asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP)
with a defect is a minimal model for such a bottleneck scenario. One crucial
question is "What is the critical strength of the defect that is required to
create global effects, i.e. traffic jams localized at the defect position".
Intuitively one would expect that already an arbitrarily small bottleneck
strength leads to global effects in the system, e.g. a reduction of the maximal
current. Therefore it came as a surprise when, based on computer simulations,
it was claimed that the reaction of the system depends in non-continuous way on
the defect strength and weak defects do not have a global influence on the
system. Here we reconcile intuition and simulations by showing that indeed the
critical defect strength is zero. We discuss the implications for the analysis
of empirical and numerical data.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in the proceedings of Traffic and Granular Flow
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