Imaginary noise and parity conservation in the reaction A+A <--> 0

Abstract

The master equation for the reversible reaction A+A <--> 0 is considered in Poisson representation, where it is equivalent to a Langevin equation with imaginary noise for a complex stochastic variable \phi. Such Langevin equations appear quite generally in field-theoretic treatments of reaction-diffusion problems. For this example we study the probability flow in the complex \phi plane both analytically and by simulation. We show that this flow has various curious features that must be expected to occur similarly in other Langevin equations associated with reaction-diffusion problems.