Deterministic limit of stochastic chemical kinetics.

An analysis is presented of the approximating assumptions that underlie a recently proposed derivation of the traditional deterministic reaction rate equation from a discrete-stochastic formulation of chemical kinetics. It is shown that if the system is close enough to the thermodynamic limit, in which the molecular populations and the containing volume all approach infinity in such a way that the molecular concentrations remain finite, then the required approximating assumptions will be justified for practically all spatially homogeneous systems that one is likely to encounter.