Distributed fixed resources exchanging particles: Phases of an asymmetric exclusion process connected to two reservoirs

We propose and study a conceptual one-dimensional model to explore how the combined interplay between fixed resources and particle exchanges between different parts of an extended system can affect the stationary densities in a current carrying channel connecting different parts of the system. To this end, we consider model composed of a totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) in a lattice connecting two particle reservoirs without any internal dynamics but which can exchange particles, ensuring nonvanishing currents in the steady states. The total particle number in the system that defines the “resources” available, although is kept constant by the model dynamics, but can take any value independent of the model parameters that define the dynamical update rules. We show that the resulting phase diagrams of the model are parametrised by the parameters which define the various dynamical update rules together with the total available resources. These parameters can be tuned to make the density on the TASEP lane globally uniform or piecewise continuous, and can also control populations of the two reservoirs. In general, the phase diagrams are quite different from a TASEP with open boundaries. In the limit of large amount of resources, the phase diagrams become topologically identical to that for an open TASEP.