  Tau functions expressed as fermionic expectation values are shown to provide
a natural and straightforward description of a number of random processes and
statistical models involving hard core configurations of identical particles on
the integer lattice, like a discrete version simple exclusion processes (ASEP),
nonintersecting random walkers, lattice Coulomb gas models and others, as well
as providing a powerful tool for combinatorial calculations involving paths
between pairs of partitions. We study the decay of the initial step function
within the discrete ASEP (d-ASEP) model as an example.
