English

Universality of shocks in conserved driven single-file motions with bottlenecks

Statistical Mechanics 2026-03-26 v3

Abstract

Driven single-file motion, in which particles move unidirectionally along one-dimensional channels, sets the paradigm for wide variety of one-dimensional directed movements, ranging from intracellular transport and urban traffic to ant trails and controlled robot swarms. Motivated by the phenomenologies of these systems in closed geometries, regulated by number conservation and bottlenecks, we explore the domain walls (DWs) or shocks in a conceptual one-dimensional cellular automaton with a fixed particle number and a bottleneck. For high entry and exit rates of the cellular automaton, and with sufficiently large particle numbers, the DWs formed are independent of the associated rate parameters, revealing a {\em hitherto unknown universality} in their {\em shapes}, which are however enclosed by nonuniversal boundary layers. In contrast, the DWs do depend upon these parameters, if small, and hence have nonuniversal shapes, but without boundary layers. Nonuniversal delocalized DWs can be formed by additional tuning of the control parameters. Our predictions on the DWs are testable in model experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.09497,
  title  = {Universality of shocks in conserved driven single-file motions with bottlenecks},
  author = {Sourav Pal and Abhik Basu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.09497},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Physical Review E as a letter