First-passage time distributions for subdiffusion in confined geometry

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Jun 22;98(25):250602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.250602. Epub 2007 Jun 22.

Abstract

In this Letter, we derive a relationship between the moments of the first-passage time for a random walk and the first-passage time density for subdiffusive processes modeled by continuous-time random walks. In particular, we show that the exact long-time behavior of the density depends only on the mean first-passage time of the corresponding normal diffusive process. In addition, we give explicit evaluations of the first-passage time distribution for general three-dimensional bounded domains. These results are relevant to systems involving anomalous diffusion in confinements.