Numerical study of a first-order irreversible phase transition in a CO+NO catalyzed reaction model

ERNESTO S. LOSCAR; EZEQUIEL V. ALBANO

PHYSICAL REVIEW E - STATISTICAL PHYSICS, PLASMAS, FLUIDS AND RELATED INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS

American Physical Society

Lugar: New York, USA; Año: 2002 vol. 65 p. 661011 - 661018

1063-651X

The first-order irreversible phase transitions (IPT) of the Yaldran-Khan model (Yaldran-Khan, J. Catal. 131, 369, 1991) for the CO+NO reaction is studied using the constant coverage (CC) ensemble and performing epidemic simulations. The CC method allow the study of hysteretic effects close to coexistence as well as the location of both the upper spinodal point and the coexistence point. Epidemic studies show that at coexistence the number of active sites decreases according to a (short-time) power-law followed by a (long-time) exponential decay. It is concluded that first-order IPT´s share many characteristic their reversible counterparts, such as the development of short ranged correlations, hysteretic effects, metastabilities, etc.