Chemical reaction kinetic perspective with mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics

Abstract

We distinguish a mechanical representation of the world in terms of point masses with positions and momenta and the chemical representation of the world in terms of populations of different individuals, each with intrinsic stochasticity, but population wise with statistical rate laws in their syntheses, degradations, spatial diffusion, individual state transitions, and interactions. Such a formal kinetic system in a small volume $V$, like a single cell, can be rigorously treated in terms of a Markov process describing its nonlinear kinetics as well as nonequilibrium thermodynamics at a mesoscopic scale. We introduce notions such as open, driven chemical systems, entropy production, free energy dissipation, etc. Then in the macroscopic limit, we illustrate how two new "laws", in terms of a generalized free energy of the mesoscopic stochastic dynamics, emerge. Detailed balance and complex balance are two special classes of "simple" nonlinear kinetics. Phase transition is intrinsically related to multi-stability and saddle-node bifurcation phenomenon, in the limits of time $t\rightarrow\infty$ and system's size $V\rightarrow\infty$. Using this approach, we re-articulate the notion of inanimate equilibrium branch of a system and nonequilibrium state of a living matter, as originally proposed by Nicolis and Prigogine, and seek a logic consistency between this viewpoint and that of P. W. Anderson and J. J. Hopfield's in which macroscopic law emerges through symmetry breaking.