Reply to "Comment on 'Validity of path thermodynamic description of reactive systems: Microscopic simulations' ".

Abstract

The Comment's author argues that a correct description of reactive systems should incorporate an explicit interaction with reservoirs, leading to a unified system-reservoir entity. However, this proposition has two major flaws. First, as we will emphasize, this entity inherently follows a thermodynamic equilibrium distribution. In the Comment, no indication is provided on how to maintain such a system-reservoir entity in a nonequilibrium state. Second, contrary to the author's claim, the inclusion of a system-reservoir interaction in the traditional stochastic modeling of reactive systems does not automatically alter the limited applicability of path thermodynamics to problematic reactive systems. We will provide a simple demonstration to illustrate that certain elementary reactions may not involve any changes in reservoir components, which seem to have been overlooked by the author.