The annihilating process on random trees and the square lattice

Abstract

An annihilating process is an interacting particle system in which the only interaction is that a particle may kill a neighbouring particle. Since there is no birth and no movement, once a particle has no neighbours its site remains occupied for ever. The survival probability is calculated for a random tree and for the square lattice. A connection is made between annihilating processes and the adsorption of molecules onto surfaces. A one-dimensional adsorption problem is solved in the case in which the two neighbours do not act independently.