Efficient kinetic Monte Carlo method for reaction-diffusion problems with spatially varying annihilation rates

We present an efficient Monte Carlo method to simulate reaction–diffusion processes with spatially varying particle annihilation or transformation rates as it occurs for instance in the context of motor-driven intracellular transport. Like Green’s function reaction dynamics and first-passage time methods, our algorithm avoids small diffusive hops by propagating sufficiently distant particles in large hops to the boundaries of protective domains. Since for spatially varying annihilation or transformation rates the single particle diffusion propagator is not knownanalytically,wepresent an algorithm that generates efficiently either particle displacements or annihilations with the correct statistics, as we prove rigorously. The numerical efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated with an illustrative example. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.