Abstract A simple treatment of chemical equilibrium is given, based on Boltzmann’s distribution law. The results are compared with those obtained by using thermodynamics.

In an equilibrium chemical reaction mixture, the number of molecules present obeys a Poisson distribution. We ask when the same is true of the steady state of a nonequilibrium reaction network and obtain an essentially complete answer. In particular, we show that networks with certain topological features must have a Poisson distribution, whatever the reaction rates. Such driven systems also ob...

Plasmas have a broad field of applications, such as air-breathing hypersonic vehicles (plasma control for scramjet engine), spacecraft atmospheric entries (influence of precursor electrons and prediction of blackout phenomenon), high-enthalpy wind tunnels (plasmatron, arc-jet, and shock tube facilities), lightning phenomena, discharges at atmospheric pressure, laboratory nuclear fusion and astr...