Large deviations of density in the non-equilibrium steady state of boundary-driven diffusive systems

Abstract: A diffusive system coupled to unequal boundary reservoirs eventually reaches a non-equilibrium steady state. While the full-counting-statistics of current in these non-equilibrium states are well understood for generic systems, results for steady-state density fluctuations remain limited to a few integrable models. By employing an exact solution of the Macroscopic Fluctuation Theory, we characterize steady-state density fluctuations in terms of large deviations for a class of systems. Additionally, we quantitatively describe the development of these rare fluctuations. For generic diffusive systems in arbitrary dimensions, we use a perturbation around the equilibrium state to solve for the large deviation functional and the corresponding path to fluctuations, up to non-trivial orders where the non-locality of fluctuations unveils.