Current Fluctuations of the Stationary ASEP and Six-Vertex Model

Abstract

Our results in this paper are two-fold. First, we consider current fluctuations of the stationary asymmetric simple exclusion process (ASEP), run for some long time $T$, and show that they are of order $T^{1 / 3}$ along a characteristic line. Upon scaling by $T^{1 / 3}$, we establish that these fluctuations converge to the long-time height fluctuations of the stationary KPZ equation, that is, to the Baik-Rains distribution. This result has long been predicted under the context of KPZ universality and in particular extends upon a number of results in the field, including the work of Ferrari and Spohn in 2005 (who established the same result for the TASEP), and the work of Balazs and Seppalainen in 2010 (who established the $T^{1 / 3}$ scaling for the general ASEP). Second, we introduce a class of translation-invariant Gibbs measures that characterizes a one-parameter family of slopes for an arbitrary ferroelectric, symmetric six-vertex model. This family of slopes corresponds to what is known as the conical singularity (or tricritical point) in the free energy profile for the ferroelectric six-vertex model. We consider fluctuations of the height function of this model on a large grid of size $T$ and show that they too are of order $T^{1 / 3}$ along a certain characteristic line; this confirms a prediction of Bukman and Shore from 1995 stating that the ferroelectric six-vertex model should exhibit KPZ growth at the conical singularity. Upon scaling the height fluctuations by $T^{1 / 3}$, we again recover the Baik-Rains distribution in the large $T$ limit. Recasting this statement in terms of the (asymmetric) stochastic six-vertex model confirms a prediction of Gwa and Spohn from 1992.