Diffusion laws select boundary conditions

Abstract

The choice of boundary condition makes an essential difference in the solution structure of diffusion equations. The Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions and their combination have been the most used, but their legitimacy has been disputed. We show that the diffusion laws may select boundary conditions by themselves, and through this, we clarify the meaning of boundary conditions. To do that we extend the domain with a boundary into the whole space by giving a small diffusivity $\eps>0$ outside the domain. Then, we show that the boundary condition turns out to be Neumann or Dirichlet as $\eps\to0$ depending on the choice of a heterogeneous diffusion law. These boundary conditions are interpreted in terms of a microscopic-scale random walk model.