Effects of spur overlap in radiation chemistry : reaction in two nearby spurs

Abstract

Stochastic and deterministic techniques are developed and are used to model the kinetics of two overlapping spurs; particular attention is paid to the effect of overlap on the various reactions which occur. There is a considerable discrepancy between the two types of model in the relative importance of the possible reactions. The stochastic models predict product ratios that alter as the system evolves, an alteration that becomes more important as the overlap increases, until the spur separation is comparable to the spur width; however, in deterministic calculations the ratio of the rates of product formation is more or less independent of time. The discrepancy between the predictions of stochastic and of deterministic models becomes smaller as the number of reactive pairs per spur increases and as the separation between the spurs decreases.