Reply to "Comment on `Validity of path thermodynamic description of reactive systems: Microscopic simulations'

TL;DR

This paper refutes a comment claiming reactive systems should include explicit reservoirs, arguing that such an approach is inherently equilibrium-based and does not address non-equilibrium dynamics or elementary reactions without reservoir changes.

Contribution

It clarifies misconceptions about the role of reservoirs in path thermodynamics and defends the applicability of the existing framework to reactive systems.

Findings

Explicit reservoirs lead to equilibrium distributions

Elementary reactions may not involve reservoir changes

Path thermodynamics remains applicable to reactive systems

Abstract

The Comment's author argues that a correct description of reactive systems should incorporate the explicit interaction with reservoirs, leading to a unified system-reservoirs entity. However, this proposition has two major flaws. Firstly, as we will emphasize, this entity inherently follows a thermodynamic equilibrium distribution. In the Comment, no indication is provided on how to maintain such a system-reservoirs entity in a non-equilibrium state. Secondly, contrary to the author's claim, the inclusion of system-reservoir interaction in traditional stochastic modeling of reactive systems does not automatically alter the limited applicability of path thermodynamics to problematic reactive systems. We will provide a simple demonstration to illustrate that certain elementary reactions may not involve any changes in reservoir components, which seems to have been overlooked by the author.