Jamming transition in a cellular automaton model for traffic flow

TL;DR

This paper investigates the jamming transition in a cellular automaton traffic model, showing that noise smears out the critical behavior observed in the deterministic case, leading to a non-critical transition.

Contribution

It provides numerical simulation evidence that noise eliminates the critical point in the traffic flow transition, contrasting with the deterministic model.

Findings

Deterministic model shows a critical jamming transition with diverging correlation length.

Adding noise smears out the critical behavior, removing the sharp transition.

Only remnants of the critical point are observed with noise present.

Abstract

The cellular automaton model for traffic flow exhibits a jamming transition from a free-flow phase to a congested phase. In the deterministic case this transition corresponds to a critical point with diverging correlation length. In the presence of noise, however, no consistent picture has emerged up to now. We present data from numerical simulations which suggest the absence of critical behavior. The transition of the deterministic case is smeared out and one only observes the remnants of the critical point.