Reversible diffusion-influenced reactions of an isolated pair on two dimensional surfaces

Abstract: We investigate reversible diffusion-influenced reactions of an isolated pair in two dimensions. To this end, we employ convolution relations that permit deriving the survival probability of the reversible reaction directly in terms of the survival probability of the irreversible reaction. Furthermore, we make use of the mean reaction time approximation to write the irreversible survival probability in restricted spaces as a single exponential. In this way, we obtain exact and approximative expressions in the time domain for the reversible survival probability for three different two dimensional diffusion spaces: The infinite and restricted plane as well as the surface of a sphere. Our obtained results should prove useful in the context of membrane-bound reversible diffusion-influenced reactions in cell biology.