Microscopic versus macroscopic approaches to non-equilibrium systems

The one dimensional symmetric simple exclusion process (SSEP) is one of the very few exactly soluble models of non-equilibrium statistical physics. It describes a system of particles which diffuse with hard core repulsion on a one dimensional lattice in contact with two reservoirs of particles at unequal densities. The goal of this note is to review the two main approaches which lead to the exact expression of the large deviation functional of the density of the SSEP in its steady state: a microscopic approach (based on the matrix product ansatz and an additivity property) and a macroscopic approach (based on the macroscopic fluctuation theory of Bertini, De Sole, Gabrielli, Jona-Lasinio and Landim).

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