Survival, absorption and escape of interacting diffusing particles

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding how intra-reactant interactions influence the survival, absorption, and escape of diffusing particles, using fluctuating hydrodynamics and macroscopic fluctuation theory.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile framework based on fluctuating hydrodynamics and macroscopic fluctuation theory to analyze interacting particle diffusion problems.

Findings

Framework simplifies analysis of multi-particle reaction statistics.

Applicable to a broad class of diffusion-controlled processes.

Provides insights into effects of intra-reactant interactions.

Abstract

At finite concentrations of reacting molecules, kinetics of diffusion-controlled reactions is affected by intra-reactant interactions. As a result, multi-particle reaction statistics cannot be deduced from single-particle results. Here we briefly review a recent progress in overcoming this fundamental difficulty. We show that the fluctuating hydrodynamics and macroscopic fluctuation theory provide a simple, general and versatile framework for studying a whole class of problems of survival, absorption and escape of interacting diffusing particles.