Ubiquitous “glassy” relaxation in catalytic reaction networks

Abstract

Study of reversible catalytic reaction networks is important not only as an issue for chemical thermodynamics but also for protocells. From extensive numerical simulations and theoretical analysis, slow relaxation dynamics to sustain nonequlibrium states are commonly observed. These dynamics show two types of salient behaviors that are reminiscent of glassy behavior: slow relaxation along with the logarithmic time dependence of the correlation function and the emergence of plateaus in the relaxation-time course. The former behavior is explained by the eigenvalue distribution of a Jacobian matrix around the equilibrium state that depends on the distribution of kinetic coefficients of reactions. The latter behavior is associated with kinetic constraints rather than metastable states and is due to the absence of catalysts for chemicals in excess and the negative correlation between two chemical species. Examples are given and generality is discussed with relevance to bottleneck-type dynamics in biochemical reactions as well.