Equilibriumlike behavior in chemical reaction networks far from equilibrium.
In an equilibrium chemical reaction mixture, the number of molecules present obeys a Poisson distribution. We report that, surprisingly, the same is true of a large class of nonequilibrium reaction networks. In particular, we show that certain topological features imply a Poisson distribution, whatever the reaction rates. Such driven systems also obey an analog of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Our results shed light on the fundamental question of when equilibrium concepts might apply to nonequilibrium systems and may have applications to models of noise in biochemical networks.
Lubensky
David K
DK
Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1040, USA.