KINETIC-THEORY OF BIMOLECULAR REACTIONS IN LIQUID - III - REVERSIBLE ASSOCIATION-DISSOCIATION - A-REVERSIBLE-ARROW-C(B)

A theoretical formalism based on the fully renormalized kinetic theory is applied to a diffusion-influenced pseudo-first order reaction kine tics of reversible association-dissociation A + B reversible arrow C i ncluding unimolecular decay processes. Linear response of the system, initially at equilibrium, to a thermal perturbation is examined and a rate kernel equation for the reactant concentrations is derived. The r ate kernel has a hierarchical structure and the propagator appeared in the kernel expression is truncated by a disconnected approximation. W hen the unimolecular reactions are turned off, the response of the sys tem not only shows the long-time power law of t(-3/2) but also display s the proper behavior over the whole time region in accordance with pr evious computer simulation results. Moreover, it is shown that the amp litude of the long-time behavior predicted by previous workers is modi fied by a certain correction actor P which contains dynamical correlat ion effects. In this way, many-body complication inherent to the histo ry of reactive pair creation is properly implemented in the descriptio n of the reversible kinetics. We compare the present theory with the o ther existing theories such as the rate equation, the superposition ap proximation, and the convolution approaches. In some limiting cases, r esults obtained from the present theory can be reduced to those from t he existing theories. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9 606(98)51921-6].