Title:	Fluctuation-induced chiral symmetry breaking in autocatalytic reaction-diffusion systems
Authors:	Gayathri, V.S. Rao, Madan
Issue Date:	Oct-2007
Publisher:	EDP Sciences /Institute of Physics (IOP)
Citation:	Europhysics Letters, 2007, Vol.80, p28001
Abstract:	We show how spatiotemporal fluctuations can induce spontaneous symmetry breaking in systems which are perfectly symmetric in the absence of fluctuations. We illustrate this in the context of the autocatalytic production of chiral enantiomers from achiral reactants in reaction-diffusion systems. The mean-field steady state is chiral symmetric; spatiotemporal fluctuations induce global and complete chiral ordering with sharp phase transitions including re-entrance. We find that advective mass transport enhances the tendency to break chiral symmetry. We discuss the relation between our study and recent experiments demonstrating complete chiral symmetry breaking (CSB), and its implications to the emergence of molecular homochirality.
Description:	Restricted Access. An open-access version is available at arXiv.org (one of the alternative locations)
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/3442
ISSN:	E-ISSN(s): 1286-4854 P-ISSN(s): 0295-5075
Alternative Location:	http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0503176 http://dx.doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/80/28001
Copyright:	2007 IOP Publishing
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (TP)

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