title: Effective potential and chiral symmetry breaking.
abstract: The nonequilibrium effective potential is calculated for the Frank model of spontaneous mirror-symmetry breaking in chemistry in which external noise is introduced to account for random environmental effects. The well-mixed limit, corresponding to negligible diffusion, and the case of diffusion in two space dimensions are studied in detail. White noise has a disordering effect in the former case, whereas in the latter case a phase transition occurs for external noise exceeding a critical intensity which racemizes the system.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain. hochbergd@inta.es
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hochberg
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004058:Diffusion; D008956:Models, Chemical; D044367:Phase Transition; D013237:Stereoisomerism; D013269:Stochastic Processes