Spectral gap of the totally asymmetric exclusion process at arbitrary filling

We calculate the spectral gap of the Markov matrix of the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) on a ring of L sites with N particles. Our derivation is simple and self-contained and extends a previous calculation that was valid only for half-filling. We use a special property of the Bethe equations for TASEP to reformulate them as a one-body problem. Our method is closely related to the one used to derive exact large deviation functions of the TASEP.