Biased Random Walk in Crowded Environment: Breaking Uphill/Downhill Symmetry of Transition Times

Various natural processes can be analyzed using the concept of random walks. For a single random walker, the mean waiting times for uphill and downhill transitions between neighboring sites are equal. Here we investigate the uphill/downhill symmetry of waiting times for transitions of a tracer in crowded environment using exactly solvable one-dimensional stochastic models. It is found that, unexpectedly, the time to move in the direction of the bias (downhill) is always longer than the time to move against the bias (uphill). The degree of asymmetry depends on the particle density, the strength of the bias, and the size of the system. The microscopic origin of the symmetry breaking is discussed.