Boundary induced phase transitions in driven lattice gases with metastablestates

We study the effect of metastability onto boundary induced phase transition s in a driven lattice gas. The phase diagram for open systems, parametrized by the input and output rates, consists of two regions corresponding to th e free flow and jammed phase. Both have been entirely characterized. The mi croscopic states in the high density phase are shown to have an interesting striped structure, which undergoes a coarsening process and survives in th e thermodynamic limit.