Nonequilibrium field-induced phase separation in single-file diffusion

Abstract

Using an analytically tractable lattice model for reaction-diffusion processes of hard-core particles we demonstrate that under nonequilibrium conditions phase coexistence may arise even if the system is effectively one-dimensional as e.g. in the channel system of some zeolites or in artificial optical lattices. In our model involving two species of particles a steady-state particle current is maintained by a density gradient between the channel boundaries and by the influence of an external driving force. This leads to the development of a fluctuating but always microscopically sharp interface between two domains of different densities which are fixed by the boundary chemical potentials. The internal structure of the interface becomes very simple for strong driving force. We calculate the drift velocity and diffusion coefficient of the interface in terms of the microscopic model parameters.