The voter model with a slow membrane

Abstract

We introduce the voter model on the infinite lattice with a slow membrane and investigate its hydrodynamic behavior and nonequilibrium fluctuations. The model is defined as follows: a voter adopts one of its neighbors' opinion at rate one except for neighbors crossing the hyperplane $\{x:x_1 = 1/2\}$, where the rate is $\alpha N^{-\beta}$. Above, $\alpha>0,\,\beta \geq 0$ are two parameters and $N$ is the scaling parameter. The hydrodynamic equation turns out to be heat equation with various boundary conditions depending on the value of $\beta$. For the nonequilibrium fluctuations, the limit is described by generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with certain boundary condition corresponding to the hydrodynamic equation.