A model of irreversible jam formation in dense traffic

Abstract: We study an one-dimensional stochastic model of vehicular traffic on open segments of a single-lane road of finite size $L$. The vehicles obey a stochastic discrete-time dynamics which is a limiting case of the generalized Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process. This dynamics has been previously used by Bunzarova and Pesheva [Phys. Rev. E 95, 052105 (2017)] for an one-dimensional model of irreversible aggregation. The model was shown to have three stationary phases: a many-particle one, MP, a phase with completely filled configuration, CF, and a boundary perturbed MP+CF phase, depending on the values of the particle injection ($\alpha$), ejection ($\beta$) and hopping ($p$) probabilities. Here we extend the results for the stationary properties of the MP+CF phase, by deriving exact expressions for the local density at the first site of the chain and the probability P(1) of a completely jammed configuration. The unusual phase transition, characterized by jumps in both the bulk density and the current (in the thermodynamic limit), as $\alpha$ crosses the boundary $\alpha =p$ from the MP to the CF phase, is explained by the finite-size behavior of P(1). By using a random walk theory, we find that, when $\alpha$ approaches from below the boundary $\alpha =p$, three different regimes appear, as the size $L\rightarrow \infty$: (i) the lifetime of the gap between the rightmost clusters is of the order $O(L)$ in the MP phase; (ii) small jams, separated by gaps with lifetime $O(1)$, exist in the MP+CF phase close to the left chain boundary; and (iii) when $\beta =p$, the jams are divided by gaps with lifetime of the order $O(L^{1/2})$. These results are supported by extensive Monte Carlo calculations.