Monte Carlo Simulations of the Critical Properties of a Ziff-Gulari-Barshad model of Catalytic CO Oxidation with Long-range Reactivity

TL;DR

This study uses large-scale Monte Carlo simulations to show that adding long-range reactivity to the Ziff-Gulari-Barshad model shifts its critical behavior from the 2D Ising universality class to mean-field, revealing new insights into nonequilibrium phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a modified ZGB model with adjustable long-range reactivity and demonstrates its critical behavior transitions from Ising to mean-field universality class.

Findings

Critical point shifts from Ising to mean-field universality class with long-range reactivity.

Large system simulations improve accuracy of the original ZGB model's critical point.

Critical behavior aligns with equilibrium Ising ferromagnet with weak long-range interactions.

Abstract

The Ziff-Gulari-Barshad (ZGB) model, a simplified description of the oxidation of carbon monoxide (CO) on a catalyst surface, is widely used to study properties of nonequilibrium phase transitions. In particular, it exhibits a nonequilibrium, discontinuous transition between a reactive and a CO poisoned phase. If one allows a nonzero rate of CO desorption ($k$), the line of phase transitions terminates at a critical point ($k_{c}$). In this work, instead of restricting the CO and atomic oxygen (O) to react to form carbon dioxide (CO$_{2}$) only when they are adsorbed in close proximity, we consider a modified model that includes an adjustable probability for adsorbed CO and O atoms located far apart on the lattice to react. We employ large-scale Monte Carlo simulations for system sizes up to 240$\times$240 lattice sites, using the crossing of fourth-order cumulants to study the critical properties of this system. We find that the nonequilibrium critical point changes from the two-dimensional Ising universality class to the mean-field universality class upon introducing even a weak long-range reactivity mechanism. This conclusion is supported by measurements of cumulant fixed-point values, cluster percolation probabilities, correlation-length finite-size scaling properties, and the critical exponent ratio $\beta / \nu$. The observed behavior is consistent with that of the \emph{equilibrium} Ising ferromagnet with additional weak long-range interactions [T. Nakada, P. A. Rikvold, T. Mori, M. Nishino, and S. Miyashita, Phys. Rev. B 84, 054433 (2011)]. The large system sizes and the use of fourth-order cumulants also enable determination with improved accuracy of the critical point of the original ZGB model with CO desorption.