An introduction to mathematical models of coagulation--fragmentation processes: a discrete deterministic mean-field approach (Q852887)

An introductory overview of some coagulation-fragmentation models and their properties is given. Smoluchowski's coagulation equation is first presented, together with its main properties and the mathematical issues to be discussed: mass conservation, gelation, explicit solutions, dynamical scaling, self-similar solutions. The next section is devoted to the Becker-Döring equations, the monomer concentration being either a constant or determined by the mass conservation. A detailed description of the possible behaviours for large times and for various choices of the kinetic coefficients is given there. A short review of models extending Smoluchowski's coagulation equation and the Becker-Döring equations is provided in the last section, including the full coagulation-fragmentation model and multi-component models.