Life has most likely originated as a consequence of processes taking place in non-equilibrium conditions (e.g. in the proximity of deep-sea thermal vents) selecting states of matter that would have been otherwise unfavorable at equilibrium. Here we present a simple chemical network in which the selection of states is driven by the thermodynamic necessity of dissipating heat as rapidly as possible in the presence of a thermal gradient: states participating to faster reactions contribute the most to the dissipation rate, and are the most populated ones in non-equilibrium steady-state conditions. Building upon these results, we show that, as the complexity of the chemical network increases, the velocity of the reaction path leading to a given state determines its selection, giving rise to non-trivial localization phenomena in state space. A byproduct of our studies is that, in the presence of a temperature gradient, thermophoresis-like behavior inevitably appears depending on the transport properties of each individual state, thus hinting at a possible microscopic explanation of this intriguing yet still not fully understood phenomenon.

生命的起源很可能是由于在非平衡条件下（例如在深海热喷口附近）发生的过程选择了在平衡状态下不利的物质状态。在这里，我们提出了一个简单的化学网络，其中状态的选择是由在存在热梯度的情况下尽可能快地散热的热力学必要性驱动的：参与更快反应的状态对耗散率的贡献最大，并且是在非平衡稳态条件下人口最多的。基于这些结果，我们表明，随着化学网络复杂性的增加，导致给定状态的反应路径的速度决定了它的选择，从而在状态空间中产生非平凡的局部化现象。