Exchange of stability as a function of system size in a nonequilibrium system

Abstract

In equilibrium systems with short-ranged interactions, the relative stability of different thermodynamic states generally does not depend on system size (as long as this size is larger than the interaction range). Here, we use a large deviations approach to show that, in contrast, different states can exchange stability as system size is varied in a driven, bistable reaction-diffusion system. This striking effect is related to a shift from a spatially uniform to a nonuniform transition state and should generically be possible in a wide range of nonequilibrium physical and biological systems.

7 pages, 4 figures. Supporting Material included in same file with main text

References in corpus (6)

• Extinction rates of established spatial populations
• Metastability in Interacting Nonlinear Stochastic Differential Equations I: From Weak Coupling to Synchronisation
• Fluctuations and stability in front propagation
• Metastability in Interacting Nonlinear Stochastic Differential Equations II: Large-N Behaviour
• The Effects of Weak Spatiotemporal Noise on a Bistable One-Dimensional System
• The Order of Phase Transitions in Barrier Crossing

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Quenched disorder forbids discontinuous transitions in nonequilibrium low-dimensional systems
• Long Term Effects of Small Random Perturbations on Dynamical Systems: Theoretical and Computational Tools
• Temporal disorder does not forbid discontinuous absorbing phase transitions in low dimensional systems
• Bistability: Requirements on Cell-Volume, Protein Diffusion, and Thermodynamics
• Phase coexistence in a weakly stochastic reaction-diffusion system