Starting from the deformed current-counting transition matrix for the open boundary ASEP, we prove that with a further deformation, the symmetric Koornwinder polynomials for partitions with equal row lengths appear as the normalisation of the twice deformed ground state. We give a matrix product construction for this ground state and the corresponding symmetric Koornwinder polynomials. Based on the form of this construction and numerical evidence, we conjecture a relation between the generating function of the cumulants of the current, and a certain limit of the symmetric Koornwinder polynomials.

31 pages