Kinetics of the 'scavenger' reaction

Abstract

The authors study the kinetics of a diffusion-controlled reaction in which perfect traps (scavengers) diffuse and consume randomly distributed particles. They find that the number of particles remaining after time t decays as exp(- alpha ctd2/), for spatial dimensions d<2, and as exp(- alpha ct) for d>or=2, where alpha is a constant, and c is the trap concentration. These predictions are supported by Monte Carlo data in d=1 and d=2. They also discuss the differences between the scavenger reaction and the reaction of particles diffusing and being consumed by randomly distributed static traps. Finally, they treat the situation where both the particles and the traps diffuse.