Hydrodynamics and Platoon Formation for a Totally Asymmetric Exclusion Model with Particlewise Disorder

We consider a one-dimensional totally asymmetric exclusion model with quenched random jump rates associated with the particles, and an equivalent interface growth process on the square lattice. We obtain rigorous limit theorems for the shape of the interface, the motion of a tagged particle, and the macroscopic density profile on the hydrodynamic scale. The theorems are valid under almost every realization of the disordered rates. Under suitable conditions on the distribution of jump rates the model displays a disorder-dominated low-density phase where spatial inhomogeneities develop below the hydrodynamic resolution. The macroscopic signature of the phase transition is a density discontinuity at the front of the rarefaction wave moving out of an initial step-function profile. Numerical simulations of the density fluctuations ahead of the front suggest slow convergence to the predictions of a deterministic particle model on the real line, which contains only random velocities but no temporal noise.