"Glassy" Relaxation in Catalytic Reaction Networks

Relaxation dynamics in reversible catalytic reaction networks is studied, revealing two salient behaviors that are reminiscent of glassy behavior: slow relaxation with log(time) dependence of the correlation function, and emergence of a few plateaus in the relaxation. The former is explained by the eigenvalue distribution of a Jacobian matrix around the equilibrium state that follows the distribution of kinetic coefficients of reactions. The latter is associated with kinetic constraints, rather than metastable states, and is due to the deficiency of catalysts for chemicals in excess and negative correlation between the two chemical species. Examples are given, and generality is discussed.