MANY-BODY EFFECTS IN DIFFUSION-LIMITED KINETICS

We review a novel approach to treating many-body effects in diffusion-limited kinetics. The derivation of the general expression for the survival probability of a Brownian particle in the presence of randomly distributed traps is given. The reduction of this expression to both the Smoluchowski solution and the well-known asymptotic behavior is demonstrated. It is shown that the Smoluchowski solution gives a lower bound for the particle survival probability. The correction to the Smoluchowski solution which takes into account the particle death slowdown in the initial process stage is described. The steady-state rate-constant concentration dependence and the reflection of many-body effects in it are discussed in detail.