Asymmetric exclusion processes with fixed resources: Reservoir crowding and steady states

Abstract

We study the nonequilibrium steady states of an asymmetric exclusion process (TASEP) coupled to a reservoir of unlimited capacity. We elucidate how the steady states are controlled by the interplay between the reservoir population that dynamically controls both the entry and exit rates of the TASEP, and the total particle number in the system. The TASEP can be in the low density, high density, maximal current and shock phases. We show that such a TASEP is different from an open TASEP for all values of available resources: here, the TASEP can support only localised domain walls for any (finite) amount of resources as opposed to delocalised domain walls in open TASEPs. Furthermore, in the limit of infinite resources, the TASEP can be found in its high density phase only for any finite values of the control parameters, in contrast to an open TASEP.