2008/03/19 by E. Ben-Naim, E. Ben‐Naim, P. L. Krapivsky
Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.77.061132
published as Phys. Rev. E 77, 061132 (2008) · 9 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2008/03/19 · openalex publication_date 2008/06/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate a reversible polymerization process in which individual polymers aggregate and fragment at a rate proportional to their molecular weight. We find a nonequilibrium phase transition despite the fact that the dynamics are perfectly reversible. When the strength of the fragmentation process exceeds a critical threshold, the system reaches a thermodynamic steady state where the total number of polymers is proportional to the system size. The polymer length distribution has a sharp exponential tail in this case. When the strength of the fragmentation process falls below the critical threshold, the steady state becomes nonthermodynamic as the total number of polymers grows sublinearly with the system size. Moreover, the length distribution has an algebraic tail and the characteristic exponent varies continuously with the fragmentation rate.