Carbon monoxide oxidation on IRIDIUM(111) Surfaces under Colored Noise

We study the effect of external noise on the catalytic oxidation of CO on an Iridium(111) single crystal under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. This reaction can be considered as a model of catalysis used in the industry. In the absence of noise, the reaction exhibits one or two stable stationary states, depending on the control parameters such as temperature and partial pressures. When noise is added, for instance, by randomly varying the quality of the influx mixture, the system exhibits stochastic reaction rate and switching. In this work, we present the theoretical predictions for the bistable situation using a number of colored-noise approximations that consider the intensity and correlation of the external fluctuations. As we will show, only some of these approximations are suitable for bistable systems.