Robin-type boundary conditions in transition from reaction-diffusion equations in 3D domains to equations in 2D domains (Q2327422)

The authors consider a singular limit of diffusion equations in 3D domains with thickness converging to zero. Going to the 2D limit, the resulting reaction-diffusion equation ends up to have a source term resulting from the Robin-type boundary conditions imposed on boundaries of the original 3D domain. The proposed approach is very flexible and can be applied in different contexts such us the study of diffusion problems in thin planar, cylindrical, or spherical layers between two membranes. The authors apply their approach to study of the problem of activation of B lymphocytes, which have relatively large nuclei and a thin cytoplasmic layer which can be considered as a spherical shell. Assuming additionally axial symmetry, they give a rigorous proof of the convergence to the limiting case by using semigroups notation.