Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-soft-condensed-matter-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/section-b/5/b/solution

In the steady state, conservation of probability requires , so is constant. The sign is positive because increasing gap reaches the incorporation boundary, whereas the deterministic drift points towards smaller gap. Thus
An integrating factor gives
Substitution makes the check particularly transparent:
so . The constant offset is necessary for nonzero transport; a pure Boltzmann distribution would have and could not describe a steady succession of addition events. The limit is taken after applying the boundary conditions, avoiding the apparent singularity of the displayed parametrization.

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