Driven lattice gas as a ratchet and pawl machine

Boundary-induced transport in particle systems with anomalous diffusion exhibits rectification, negative resistance, and hysteresis phenomena depending on the way the drive acts on the boundary. The solvable case of a one-dimensional (1D) system characterized by a power-law diffusion coefficient and coupled to two particle reservoirs at different chemical potential is examined. In particular, it is shown that a microscopic realization of such a diffusion model is provided by a 3D driven lattice gas with kinetic constraints, in which energy barriers are absent and the local microscopic reversibility holds.