Probabilistic derivation and analysis of the chemical diffusion master equation with mutual annihilation

Abstract

We propose a probabilistic derivation of the so-called chemical diffusion master equation (CDME) and describe an infinite dimensional moment generating function method for finding its analytical solution. CDMEs model by means of an infinite system of coupled Fokker-Planck equations the probabilistic evolution of chemical reaction kinetics associated with spatial diffusion of individual particles; here, we focus an creation and mutual annihilation chemical reactions combined with Brownian diffusion of the single particles. Our probabilistic approach mimics the derivation of backward Kolmogorov equations for birth-death continuous time Markov chains. Moreover, the proposed infinite dimensional moment generating function method links certain finite dimensional projections of the solution of the CDME to the solution of a single linear fourth order partial differential equation containing as many variables as the dimension of the aforementioned projection space.