Noisy CO oxidation on Iridium(111) surfaces: Experiments explained by theory under realistic assumptions

S. Wehner*, Jaime Cisternas, Orazio Descalzi, J. Küppers

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Noise is an everywhere phenomenon. Its influence could be described theoretically quite easily, but is hard to measure in an experiment. Catalytic reactions on surfaces can be described by nonlinear reaction-diffusion equations. For one of such surface reactions - CO oxidation on Iridium(111) surfaces - the probability distribution of CO2 rates around the mean value - showing the influence of noise - could be measured directly in a ultra high vacuum (UHV) experiment. This opens the way to address such a fundamental phenomenon like noise by all three modern methods of physics - experimental, computational and analytical. We show the measured effect of colored noise on a bistable surface reaction and explain all observations directly with the underlying theoretical description - the Langmuir-Hinshelwood reaction scheme - by solving the equations under realistic assumptions. It is a great pleasure to dedicate this work to Prof. Dr. Helmut R. Brand on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)21-41
Number of pages21
JournalEuropean Physical Journal: Special Topics
Volume223
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2014

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
JC and OD thank the support of FONDECYT (Project N. 1110360). SW thanks Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for partially support of this work (WE4100/3). The authors thank Daniel Escaff for valuable discussions during the development of the project.

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