Inés Armendariz (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Zero-range processes with decreasing jump rates are known to exhibit condensation, where a finite fraction of all particles concentrates on a single lattice site when the total density exceeds a critical value. We study such a process on a one-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary conditions in the thermodynamic limit with fixed, super-critical particle density. We show that the process exhibits metastability with respect to the condensate location, i.e. the suitably accelerated process of the rescaled location converges to a limiting Markov process on the unit torus. This process has stationary, independent increments and the rates are characterized by the scaling limit of capacities of a single random walker on the lattice.

Joint work with S. Grosskinsky and M. Loulakis.