The Nature of the Condensate in Mass Transport Models

Satya N. Majumdar ¹, M. R. Evans ², R. K. P. Zia ³

Physical Review Letters 94 (2005) 180601

We study the phenomenon of real space condensation in the steady state of a class of one dimensional mass transport models. We derive the criterion for the occurrence of a condensation transition and analyse the precise nature of the shape and the size of the condensate in the condensed phase. We find two distinct condensate regimes: one where the condensate is gaussian distributed and the particle number fluctuations scale normally as $L^{1/2}$ where $L$ is the system size, and a second regime where the particle number fluctuations become anomalously large and the condensate peak is non-gaussian. We interpret these results within the framework of sums of random variables.

• 1. Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques (LPTMS),
  CNRS : UMR8626 – Université Paris XI – Paris Sud
• 2. School of Physics,
  University of Edinburgh
• 3. Department of Physics and Center for Stochastic Processes in Science and Engineering,
  Virginia Tech