Stochastic dynamics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics of a bistable chemical system: the Schlögl model revisited

Schlögl's model is the canonical example of a chemical reaction system that exhibits bistability. Because the biological examples of bistability and switching behaviour are increasingly numerous, this paper presents an integrated deterministic, stochastic and thermodynamic analysis of the model. After a brief review of the deterministic and stochastic modelling frameworks, the concepts of chemical and mathematical detailed balances are discussed and non-equilibrium conditions are shown to be necessary for bistability. Thermodynamic quantities such as the flux, chemical potential and entropy production rate are defined and compared across the two models. In the bistable region, the stochastic model exhibits an exchange of the global stability between the two stable states under changes in the pump parameters and volume size. The stochastic entropy production rate shows a sharp transition that mirrors this exchange. A new hybrid model that includes continuous diffusion and discrete jumps is suggested to deal with the multiscale dynamics of the bistable system. Accurate approximations of the exponentially small eigenvalue associated with the time scale of this switching and the full time-dependent solution are calculated using Matlab. A breakdown of previously known asymptotic approximations on small volume scales is observed through comparison with these and Monte Carlo results. Finally, in the appendix section is an illustration of how the diffusion approximation of the chemical master equation can fail to represent correctly the mesoscopically interesting steady-state behaviour of the system.