ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is devoted to the issues of existence and uniqueness of solutions to the coagulation-fragmentation (C-F) equation, presents several other important aspects of C-F theory. It focuses on the deterministic approach. The book is also devoted to a survey of the abstract concept of order in Banach spaces and its properties that are relevant to applications in the C-F theory, where the requirement that the solutions are nonnegative is crucial for both the mathematical analysis of the problem and the physical interpretation of the solutions. It provides a deeper insight into the dynamics of C-F models. The book also presents a short survey of results that have been established on C-F equations with spatial diffusion, and also on the Becker–Doring equations.
