Spatial correlations, additivity, and fluctuations in conserved-mass transport processes.

Abstract

We exactly calculate two-point spatial correlation functions in steady state in a broad class of conserved-mass transport processes, which are governed by chipping, diffusion, and coalescence of masses. We find that the spatial correlations are in general short-ranged and, consequently, on a large scale, these transport processes possess a remarkable thermodynamic structure in the steady state. That is, the processes have an equilibrium-like additivity property and, consequently, a fluctuation-response relation, which help us to obtain subsystem mass distributions in the limit of subsystem size large.