Steady-State Properties of a Totally Asymmetric Exclusion Process with Periodic Structure

We formulate and analyze the steady-state behavior of totally asymmetric simple exclusion processes (TASEPs) that contain periodically varying movement rates. In our models, particles at a majority sites hop to the right with rate $p_1$ while particles occupying a periodically arranged set of sites move to the right at rate $p_2$. A number of approximate mean field approaches are used to study the steady-state currents and bulk densities of this model. While exact solutions are not found, the mean field approaches provide results that show good agreement with data derived from extensive Monte-Carlo simulations.