Detailed balance, local detailed balance, and global potential for stochastic chemical reaction networks

Detailed balance of a chemical reaction network can be defined in several different ways. Here we investigate the relationship among four types of detailed balance conditions: deterministic, stochastic, local, and zero-order local detailed balance. We show that the four types of detailed balance are equivalent when different reactions lead to different species changes and are not equivalent when some different reactions lead to the same species change. Under the condition of local detailed balance, we further show that the system has a global potential defined over the whole space, which plays a central role in the large deviation theory and the Freidlin–Wentzell-type metastability theory of chemical reaction networks. Finally, we provide a new sufficient condition for stochastic detailed balance, which is applied to construct a class of high-dimensional chemical reaction networks that both satisfies stochastic detailed balance and displays multistability.