Non-equilibrium thermodynamical principles for chemical reactions with mass-action kinetics

Abstract

We study stochastic interacting particle systems that model chemical reaction networks on the microscopic scale, converging to the macroscopic Reaction Rate Equation. One abstraction level higher, we also study the ensemble of such particle systems, converging to the corresponding Liouville transport equation. For both systems, we calculate the corresponding large deviations and show that under the condition of detailed balance, the large deviations enables us to derive a non-linear relation between thermodynamic fluxes and free energy driving force.