Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2016
We give a new combinatorial interpretation of the stationary distribution of the (partially) asymmetric exclusion process on a finite number of sites in terms of decorated alternative trees and coloured permutations. The corresponding expressions of the multivariate partition functions are then related to multivariate generalisations of Eulerian polynomials for coloured permutations considered recently by N. Williams and the third author, and others. We also discuss stability and negative dependence properties satisfied by the partition functions.