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LIT-1887: Emergence of Open Chemical Reaction Network Thermodynamics within Closed Systems

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StatusActive — read 2026-10-31 (NOTE-1468; appendices skimmed); worth reading as the derivation of chemostats inside closed systems, with a lifetime: open behaviour needs both time-scale and abundance separation and lasts a time of order the abundance ratio (THEORY-1250). It, not LIT-1886, supports A13's point that maintained organizations end when their driving is exhausted.
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Tagsthermodynamics
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1468 — Remlein, Esposito & Avanzini — Open reaction networks emerging in closed ones
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-1250 — A chemostat is an emergent structure of a closed reaction network: when exchange reactions are fast and the reservoir species are abundant by a factor of order Omega, the closed network behaves to leading order as the open one, with its local detailed balance and dissipation, over a window that opens once exchange equilibrates and closes on a time of order Omega, after which a driven network relaxes to equilibrium; neither separation alone suffices

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Remlein, B., Esposito, M., & Avanzini, F. (2026). Emergence of open chemical reaction network thermodynamics within closed systems. Physical Review X. arXiv:2604.14848.

Read in NOTE-1468.

Why this is here

A13 cited it for the point that an “external” driving reservoir is a matter of where the boundary and the time scales are drawn. That is CLAIM-478’s scale separation making constraints, in chemistry, and the reading bears it out (THEORY-1250), with two sharpenings for the claim: the constraint needs abundance separation as well as rate separation, and its window has three time scales, its upper end set by the reservoir’s capacity. It is also the paper that supports A13’s finite-lifetime point, which the registration attributed to LIT-1886: an organization maintained by a finite reservoir is maintained for a time of order the reservoir’s abundance over its draw, which bears on what “endogenously maintained” can mean in CASE-189.

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