Critical stationary fluctuations in reaction--diffusion processes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the critical stationary fluctuations in a one-dimensional reaction--diffusion process, revealing non-Gaussian behavior of magnetization and contrasting fluctuations in the density field at criticality.

Contribution

It demonstrates the non-Gaussian fluctuations of the scaled magnetization and analyzes the contrasting behavior of the density field at the critical point.

Findings

Magnetization scaled by n^{3/4} converges to a non-Gaussian distribution.

Density field fluctuations are significantly smaller and Gaussian for zero-mean test functions.

The density field's action on zero-mean test functions vanishes in the limit.

Abstract

We study stationary fluctuations at criticality for a one-dimensional reaction--diffusion process combining symmetric simple exclusion dynamics with Glauber-type spin flips. The strength of the Glauber interaction is tuned to the critical regime in which the quadratic term in the effective potential vanishes. Focusing on the stationary distribution, we show that the total magnetization scaled by $n^{3/4}$ exhibits non-Gaussian fluctuations. More precisely, we prove that under the invariant measure the rescaled magnetization converges in distribution to a random variable with density proportional to $\exp\{-2(\theta y^2 + y^4/2)\}$. In contrast with the previous result, we show that the density field acting on the faster modes, that is, those associated to zero-mean test functions, have much smaller Gaussian fluctuations. It follows from the previous two results that the rescaled density field projects onto the magnetization in the sense that its action on zero-mean test functions vanishes in the limit.