Nonisothermal diffusion-reaction with nonlinear Kramers kinetics

Recently, we have started to develop mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics for a reaction far from equilibrium in the presence of a temperature gradient, so that the interplay between the chemical reaction, diffusion and thermal diffusion can be described within the same theoretical framework. In this article we show that the spatial symmetry properties of the deterministic solution, which were so characteristic for conditions close to equilibrium, are no longer valid far from equilibrium. This is expected to have some conceptual consequences for the spatial spectrum of the fluctuations of temperature and concentrations around their local equilibrium values. (C) 2011 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.