title: Metastability in Schloegl's second model for autocatalysis: Lattice-gas realization with particle diffusion.
abstract: We analyze metastability associated with a discontinuous nonequilibrium phase transition in a stochastic lattice-gas realization of Schloegl's second model for autocatalysis. This model realization involves spontaneous annihilation, autocatalytic creation, and diffusion of particles on a square lattice, where creation at empty sites requires an adjacent diagonal pair of particles. This model, also known as the quadratic contact process, exhibits discontinuous transition between a populated active state and a particle-free vacuum or "poisoned" state, as well as generic two-phase coexistence. The poisoned state exists for all particle annihilation rates p>0 and hop rates h≥0 and is an absorbing state in the sense of Markovian processes. The active or reactive steady state exists only for p below a critical value, p{e}=p{e}(h) , but a metastable extension appears for a range of higher p up to an effective upper spinodal point, p{s+}=p{s+}(h) (i.e., p{s+}>p{e} ). For selected h , we assess the location of p{s+}(h) by characterizing both the poisoning kinetics and the propagation of interfaces separating vacuum and active states as a function of p .
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics & Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, 50011, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaofang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: De Decker
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Evans