Accumulation time of diffusion in a two-dimensional singularly perturbed domain

Abstract

A general problem of current interest is the analysis of diffusion problems in singularly perturbed domains, within which small subdomains are removed from the domain interior and boundary conditions imposed on the resulting holes. One major application is to intracellular diffusion, where the holes could represent organelles or biochemical substrates. In this paper, we use a combination of matched asymptotic analysis and Green’s function methods to calculate the so-called accumulation time for relaxation to steady state. The standard measure of the relaxation rate is in terms of the principal non-zero eigenvalue of the negative Laplacian. However, this global measure does not account for possible differences in the relaxation rate at different spatial locations, is independent of the initial conditions, and relies on the assumption that the eigenvalues have sufficiently large spectral gaps. As previously established for diffusion-based morphogen gradient formation, the accumulation time provides a better measure of the relaxation process.