Solutions to an expression of the form xex=C are defined as branches of the Lambert W function W[n,C], where n are integer values Corless et al., 1996. Therefore, the solutions un to Eq. (3) are
Real-valued solutions W[n,x] only exist for n=−1,0Corless et al. (1996). Additionally, for tn to occur after the primary field has been removed (tn≥0), W[n,x] requires −1/e≤x≤0. Thus, by Eq. (5):
Recall that our choice in after-effect function (11) is only valid for τ1≪t≪τ2. Therefore, the condition defined in expression (6) is reasonable under the assumption that tβ≪τ2. We evaluated Eq. (5) for n=0 and noticed the solutions were t0≪τ2. This violates our conditions for the after-effect function and is therefore not a valid solution. On the other hand, solutions of Eq. (5) for n=−1 did not violate conditions for the after-effect function. The solutions obtained using W[−1,x] consistently showed tα≤tβ. As a result, the time tα which solves RB=1 in expression (39) is given by:
Corless, R. M., Gonnet, G. H., Hare, D. E. G., Jeffrey, D. J., & Knuth, D. E. (1996). On the Lambert-W function. Advances in Computational Mathematics, 5(1), 329–359. 10.1007/BF02124750