Geometry of Nonequilibrium Chemical Reaction Networks and Generalized Entropy Production Decompositions

Abstract: We derive the Hessian geometric structure of nonequilibrium chemical reaction networks (CRN) on the flux and force spaces induced by the Legendre duality of convex dissipation functions and characterize their dynamics as a generalized flow. With this structure, we can extend theories of nonequilibrium systems with quadratic dissipation functions to more general ones with nonquadratic ones, which are pivotal for studying chemical reaction networks. By applying generalized notions of orthogonality in Hessian geometry to chemical reaction networks, we obtain two generalized decompositions of the entropy production rate, each of which captures gradient-flow and minimum-dissipation aspects in nonequilibrium dynamics.