Boundary effects in reaction-diffusion processes

M. J. E. Richardson, Y. Kafri

Published 1999-02-28Version 1

The effects of a boundary on reaction systems are examined in the framework of the general single-species reaction/coalescence process. The boundary naturally represents the reactants' container, but is applicable to exciton dynamics in a doped TMMC crystal. We show that a density excess, which extends into the system diffusively from the boundary, is formed in two dimensions and below. This implies a surprising result for the magnetisation near a fixed spin in the coarsening of the one-dimensional critical Ising model. The universal, dimensionally-dependent functional forms of this density excess are given by an exact solution and the field-theoretic renormalisation group.