Stationary states of the one-dimensional discrete-time facilitated symmetric exclusion process

Abstract

We describe the extremal translation invariant stationary (ETIS) states of the facilitated exclusion process on Z. In this model, all particles on sites with one occupied and one empty neighbor jump at each integer time to the empty neighbor site, and if two particles attempt to jump into the same empty site, we choose one randomly to succeed. The ETIS states are qualitatively different for densities ρ < 1/2, ρ = 1/2, and 1/2 < ρ < 1, but in each density region, we find states that may be grouped into families, each of which is in natural correspondence with the set of all ergodic measures on {0,1}Z. For ρ < 1/2, there is one such family, containing all the ergodic states in which the probability of two adjacent occupied sites is zero. For ρ = 1/2, there are two families, in which configurations translate to the left and right, respectively, with constant speed 2. For the high density case, there is a continuum of families. We show that all ETIS states at densities ρ ≤ 1/2 belong to these families and conjecture that also at high density there are no other ETIS states. We also study the possible ETIS states that might occur if the conjecture fails.