Campus Units

Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics, Ames Laboratory

Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Published Version

Publication Date

8-2010

Journal or Book Title

Physical Review E

Volume

82

Issue

2

First Page

021121-1

Last Page

021121-12

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevE.82.021121

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>0and 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, pe=pe(h), but a metastable extension appears for a range of higher p up to an effective upper spinodal point, ps+=ps+(h) (i.e., ps+>pe). For selected h, we assess the location of ps+(h) by characterizing both the poisoning kinetics and the propagation of interfaces separating vacuum and active states as a function of p.

Comments

This article was published in Physical Review E 82 (2010): 021121, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.82.021121. Posted with permission.

Copyright Owner

American Physical Society

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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