Hopping transport in hostile reaction-diffusion systems

We investigate transport in a disordered reaction-diffusion model consisting of particles which are allowed to diffuse, compete with one another (2A→A), give birth in small areas called "oases" (A→2A), and die in the "desert" outside the oases (A→0). This model has previously been used to study bacterial populations in the laboratory and is related to a model of plankton populations in the oceans. We first consider the nature of transport between two oases: In the limit of high growth rate, this is effectively a first passage process, and we are able to determine the first passage time probability density function in the limit of large oasis separation. This result is then used along with the theory of hopping conduction in doped semiconductors to estimate the time taken by a population to cross a large system.