Large deviations of current for the symmetric simple exclusion process on a semi-infinite line and on an infinite line with a slow bond.

Abstract

Two influential exact results in classical one-dimensional diffusive transport are about current statistics for the symmetric simple exclusion process: one in the stationary state on a finite line coupled with two unequal reservoirs at the boundaries, and the other in the nonstationary state on an infinite line. We present the corresponding result for the intermediate geometry of a semi-infinite line coupled with a single reservoir. This result is obtained using the fluctuating hydrodynamics approach of macroscopic fluctuation theory and confirmed by rare event simulations using a cloning algorithm. We apply our exact result for solving several related challenging problems, namely, the full counting statistics in presence of a defect bond, exclusion process with localized injection, survival of a tagged particle in presence of an absorbing boundary, and the stretched exponential decay in a kinetically constrained model.