We consider a gas of point particles moving in a one-dimensional channel with a hard-core interparticle interaction that prevents particle crossings—this is called single-file motion. Starting from equilibrium initial conditions we observe the motion of a tagged particle. It is well known that if the individual particle dynamics is diffusive, then the tagged particle motion is subdiffusive, while for ballistic particle dynamics, the tagged particle motion is diffusive. Here we compute the exact large deviation function for the tagged particle displacement and show that this is universal, independent of the individual dynamics.

• Received 30 June 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.120601