Maule: tilings, Young and Tamari lattices under the same roof

We introduce a new family of posets (partially ordered sets) which I propose to call "maule". Every finite subset of the square lattice generates a maule by a dynamical process of particles moving on the square lattice. Three well-known lattices are maules: Ferrers diagrams Y(λ) contained in a given diagram λ (ideal of the Young lattice), some tilings on the triangular lattice (equivalent to plane partitions) and the very classic Tamari lattice defined with the notion of "rotation" on binary trees. We thus get a new simple definition of the Tamari lattice. Curiously, the concept of alternative tableaux plays a crucial role in this work. Such tableaux were introduced in a totally different context: the very classical model called PASEP ("partially asymmetric exclusion process"), a toy model in the physics of dynamical systems.