An introductory review on the critical behaviour of some irreversible reaction systems is given. The study of these systems has attracted great attention during the last decades due to, on the one hand, the rich and complex underlying physics, and on the other hand, their relevance for numerous technological applications in heterogeneous catalysis, corrosion and coating, development of microelectronic devices, etc. The review is focuses on recent advances in the understanding of irreversible phase transitions (IPT's) providing a survey of the theoretical development of the field during the last decade, as well as a detailed discussion of relevant numerical simulations. The Langevin formulation for the treatment of second-order IPT's is discussed. Different Monte Carlo approaches are also presented in detail and the finite-size scaling analysis of second-order IPT's is described. Special attention is devoted to the description of recent progress in the study of first-order IPT's observed upon catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide and the reduction of nitrogen monoxide, using lattice gas reaction models. Only brief comments are given on other reactions such as the oxidation of hydrogen, ammonia synthesis, etc. Also, a discussion of relevant experiments is presented and measurement are compared with the numerical results. Furthermore, promising areas for further research and open questions are also addressed.
Irreversible Reactions and Diffusive Escape: Stationary Properties
我们研究了三个基本的扩散控制反应过程--湮灭、聚结和聚集。我们研究的演变开始与最自然的不均匀的初始配置，其中半线是均匀填充的粒子，而互补的半线是空的。我们表明，渗透到最初空的半线的粒子的总数是有限的，并有一个固定的分布。我们确定平均密度的演变，从中我们得出初始空半行中粒子的平均总数N;例如，对于湮灭，\langle N \rangle = 3/16+1/（4π）。对于聚结过程，我们设计了一个程序，原则上允许计算P（N），在最初的空半行中找到正好N个粒子的概率;我们在第一个非平凡的情况下完成计算（N=1）。作为一个副产品，我们得到两个领先粒子之间的距离分布。
Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学斯特拉廷化学研究所）；Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen（格罗宁根大学生态进化科学研究所）；Radboud University Nijmegen（奈梅亨拉德堡德大学）
