Heriot-Watt Mathematics Report Series
HWM00-20, 10 Aug 2000

Metastability in the Classical, Truncated Becker-Döring Equations

D B Duncan and R M Dunwell


Abstract

We show that in the classical (fixed monomer concentration) Becker-Döring equations truncated at finite cluster size, the slow evolution (metastability) of solutions can be explained in terms of the eigensystem of this linear ODE system. In particular, for a common choice of coagulation-fragmentation rate constants there is an extremely small nonzero eigenvalue which is isolated from the rest of the spectrum. We give estimates and bounds on the size of this eigenvalue, the gap between it and the second smallest, and the size of the largest eigenvalue. The bounds on the smallest eigenvalue are very sharp when the system size and/or monomer concentration are large enough.

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Publication

D B Duncan, R M Dunwell , Metastability in the classical, truncated Becker-Doring equations, Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, 45, 701-716, (2002).


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