Let be the cell number density. The steady cell conservation equation with isotropic translational diffusion is
Using the rapid-rotation mean gyrotactic orientation, put , so the swimming drift is . In the transverse plane, and . Thus and
Multiplying the conservation equation by gives
with and . The base fluid velocity is tangent to the wall. Zero normal cell flux there is , or
Normalization requires the cross-sectional mean of to be one.
For , set . The drift term acting on the leading constant vanishes, and the first angular harmonic satisfies
Writing turns this into the Modified Bessel differential equation of order one. Its regular solution is
where is the Modified Bessel function of the first kind. The singular second solution is excluded at the axis, and the displayed coefficient enforces the wall boundary condition. The angular harmonic has zero area average, so the normalization is satisfied at this order.
When , the gyrotactic concentration layer at a rotating-cylinder wall has stretched coordinate . The leading radial equation is . The solution decaying into the interior is proportional to ; the wall condition fixes its coefficient to . Hence
This also follows from the large-argument asymptotic expansion of , which gives near the wall; within the layer. Its thickness is . The quoted exponential is a wall-layer approximation, not an exact solution all the way to ; the Modified Bessel function of the first kind formula supplies the regular continuation through the axis.