Cutoff profile of ASEP on a segment

Abstract

This paper studies the mixing behavior of the Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (ASEP) on a segment of length $N$. Our main result is that for particle densities in $(0,1),$ the total-variation cutoff window of ASEP is $N^{1/3}$ and the cutoff profile is $1-F_{\mathrm{GUE}},$ where $F_{\mathrm{GUE}}$ is the Tracy-Widom distribution function. This also gives a new proof of the cutoff itself, shown earlier by Labbé and Lacoin. Our proof combines coupling arguments, the result of Tracy-Widom about fluctuations of ASEP started from the step initial condition, and exact algebraic identities coming from interpreting the multi-species ASEP as a random walk on a Hecke algebra.

22 pages, 3 Figures. V2: Corollary 1 has been given a proof. Several smaller corrections following comments of referees