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Fluctuating chemically active droplets
Abstract
We study size fluctuations of chemically active droplets in the regime of weak reactions and strong phase separation. By combining a thin-interface model for the deterministic droplet growth with stochastic noise based on fluctuation-dissipation arguments, we report excellent quantitative agreement between our theory and numerical field simulations. Finally, we use our model to infer the effective non-equilibrium potential that governs droplet growth, and show that active reactions that enable size control suppress nucleation.
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BibTeX
@misc{kusters2026fluctuating,
title = {{Fluctuating chemically active droplets}},
author = {Guido L. A. Kusters and Noah Ziethen and Michael E. Cates and David Zwicker},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.08154},
eprint = {2610.08154},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08154},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Fluctuating chemically active droplets
AU - Guido L. A. Kusters
AU - Noah Ziethen
AU - Michael E. Cates
AU - David Zwicker
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.08154
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08154
AB - We study size fluctuations of chemically active droplets in the regime of weak reactions and strong phase separation. By combining a thin-interface model for the deterministic droplet growth with stochastic noise based on fluctuation-dissipation arguments, we report excellent quantitative agreement between our theory and numerical field simulations. Finally, we use our model to infer the effective non-equilibrium potential that governs droplet growth, and show that active reactions that enable size control suppress nucleation.
ER -