Characterizing steady state and transient properties of reaction-diffusion systems

Abstract

In the past the study of reaction-diffusion systems has greatly contributed to our understanding of the behavior of many-body systems far from equilibrium. In this paper we aim at characterizing the properties of diffusion limited reactions both in their steady states and out of stationarity. Many reaction-diffusion systems have the peculiarity that microscopic reversibility is broken such that their transient behavior can not be investigated through the study of most of the observables discussed in the literature. For this reason we analyze the transient properties of reaction-diffusion systems through a specific work observable that remains well defined even in the absence of microscopic reversibility and that obeys an exact detailed fluctuation relation in cases where detailed balance is fulfilled. We thereby drive the systems out of their nonequilibrium steady states through time-dependent reaction rates. Using a numerical exact method and computer simulations, we analyze fluctuation ratios of the probability distributions obtained during the forward and reversed processes. We show that the underlying microscopic dynamics gives rise to peculiarities in the configuration space trajectories, thereby yielding prominent features in the fluctuation ratios.

11 pages, 13 figures, to appear in Physical Review E

References in corpus (8)

• Fluctuation theorems for stochastic dynamics
• Stochastic thermodynamics of chemical reaction networks
• Integral fluctuation theorem for the housekeeping heat
• Measurement of Stochastic Entropy Production
• A possible classification of nonequilibrium steady states
• Fluctuations of the total entropy production in stochastic systems
• Non-equilibrium dynamics of gene expression and the Jarzynski equality
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Entropy production in the non-equilibrium steady states of interacting many-body systems
• Entropy production of a bound nonequilibrium interface
• A measure of the violation of the 'detailed balance' criterion: a possible definition of a 'distance' from equilibrium
• Realm of Validity of the Crooks Relation