Diffusion-limited reactions and mortal random walkers in confined geometries (Q1016087)

The authors have thoroughly examined the encounter probability of two mortal random walkers on a periodic lattice as a model of a confined geometry. They compared the results of continuum diffusion models, exact random walk treatments and their asymptotic behavior and heuristic results obtained from standard random walk analysis. The discrete-time random walk results have been shown to be in excellent agreement with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the continuous-time version that naturally lends itself to physical applications. The second half of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the influence of the geometry of the lattice, examined at the example of an aspect ratio differing from unity. An extremely distorted lattice is considered. Then an early result by Montroll is generalized to the distorted situation. Also a scaling limit is determined in which the dying out of logarithmic terms (characteristic for the two-dimensional situation) in favor of algebraic corrections (typical of the one-dimensional case) can be nicely seen and the one-dimensional asymptotic behavior is fully recovered. A general explanation of the effects which govern the changing encounter probability and the regimes to which they pertain are given.