Boundary drive induced formation of aggregate condensates in stochastic transport with short-range interactions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how boundary-driven effects and global drift influence phase transitions and condensate formation in a stochastic transport model with tunable short-range interactions, revealing boundary-induced aggregation mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a model with pair-factorized steady states that interpolates between zero-range and extended condensate behaviors, highlighting boundary effects on phase transitions.

Findings

Boundary drive induces condensate formation at system edges.

Phase transition from free particles to boundary condensates observed.

Boundary effects alter interaction mechanisms due to finite interaction range.

Abstract

We discuss the effects of particle exchange through open boundaries and the induced drive on the phase structure and condensation phenomena of a stochastic transport process with tunable short-range interactions featuring pair-factorized steady states (PFSS) in the closed system. In this model, the steady state of the particle hopping process can be tuned to yield properties from the zero-range process (ZRP) condensation model to those of models with spa- tially extended condensates. By varying the particle exchange rates as well as the presence of a global drift, we observe a phase transition from a free particle gas to a phase with condensates aggregated to the boundaries. While this transition is similar to previous results for the ZRP, we find that the mechanism is different as the presence of the boundary actually influences the interaction due to the non-zero interaction range.