Cluster and virial expansions for the multi-species Tonks gas

Abstract: We consider a mixture of non-overlapping rods of different lengths $\ell_k$ moving in $\mathbb{R}$ or $\mathbb{Z}$. Our main result are necessary and sufficient convergence criteria for the expansion of the pressure in terms of the activities $z_k$ and the densities $\rho_k$. This provides an explicit example against which to test known cluster expansion criteria, and illustrates that for non-negative interactions, the virial expansion can converge in a domain much larger than the activity expansion. In addition, we give explicit formulas that generalize the well-known relation between non-overlapping rods and labelled rooted trees. We also prove that for certain choices of the activities, the system can undergo a condensation transition akin to that of the zero-range process. The key tool is a fixed point equation for the pressure.