ON THE STOCHASTIC APPROACH TO THE CALCULATION OF CHEMICAL-REACTION TIMES AND ITS DETERMINISTIC LIMIT

A stochastic formulation is developed for the time required for thr nu mber of molecules taking part in a chemical reaction to change by a sp ecified amount. With a reaction volume V, asymptotic expressions are o btained for the expectation value of this time and its corresponding s tandard deviation in the limit of large but finite V. It is shown that as V-->infinity these results become equivalent to those obtained by a deterministic approach, and a discussion is given of the regime wher e stochastic effects become significant. (C) 1998 American Institute o f Physics. [S0021-9606(98)52204-0].