Diffusion-controlled reactions with time-dependent surface reactivity
Abstract
We investigate diffusion-controlled reactions on a reactive surface with time-dependent reactivity. Starting from a conventional formulation via diffusion equation with Robin boundary condition for the macroscopic concentration of particles, we aim at quantifying how temporal variations of reactivity affect the survival probability and the associated first-reaction time (FRT) of a single particle on the reactive surface. Using an adiabatic description, we first identify five long-time regimes of the first-reaction time distribution, ranging from exponential and stretched-exponential to power-law decay. In particular, sufficiently rapid decay of the reactivity leads to a nonzero probability of never reacting, despite diffusion in a bounded domain. Second, we provide a probabilistic reformulation of this problem and compare it with a different scenario of encounter-dependent reactivity. Our theoretical predictions are validated via extensive Monte Carlo simulations.
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BibTeX
@misc{grebenkov2026diffusioncontrolled,
title = {{Diffusion-controlled reactions with time-dependent surface reactivity}},
author = {Denis S. Grebenkov and Yilin Ye},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.23017},
eprint = {2610.23017},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23017},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Diffusion-controlled reactions with time-dependent surface reactivity
AU - Denis S. Grebenkov
AU - Yilin Ye
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/16
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.23017
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23017
AB - We investigate diffusion-controlled reactions on a reactive surface with time-dependent reactivity. Starting from a conventional formulation via diffusion equation with Robin boundary condition for the macroscopic concentration of particles, we aim at quantifying how temporal variations of reactivity affect the survival probability and the associated first-reaction time (FRT) of a single particle on the reactive surface. Using an adiabatic description, we first identify five long-time regimes of the first-reaction time distribution, ranging from exponential and stretched-exponential to power-law decay. In particular, sufficiently rapid decay of the reactivity leads to a nonzero probability of never reacting, despite diffusion in a bounded domain. Second, we provide a probabilistic reformulation of this problem and compare it with a different scenario of encounter-dependent reactivity. Our theoretical predictions are validated via extensive Monte Carlo simulations.
ER -