IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v187y1992i1p329-352.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decay of metastable states

Author

Listed:
  • Drozdov, A.N.

Abstract

The equilibration process, activated by noise, is considered as an eigenproblem of the Fokker-Planck operator. The rate of escape from quite general metastable states is calculated analytically via Rayleigh's identity. Its usefulness is demonstrated with an example of the escape of a Brownian particle across a multidimensional potential barrier. Our result is shown to provide a unified treatment of the whole range of frictional dissipation. For the case with an unknown equilibrium distribution a correction formula is derived. Its relative error decreases with decreasing noise intensity ϵ as ϵ2, instead of ϵ as is the case for the standard formulae. Our results generalize the known expressions for transition rates in a very natural way. Possible limitations of their validity are discussed, and a way to overcome them is proposed.

Suggested Citation

  • Drozdov, A.N., 1992. "Decay of metastable states," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 187(1), pages 329-352.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:187:y:1992:i:1:p:329-352
    DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(92)90425-P
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/037843719290425P
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/0378-4371(92)90425-P?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:187:y:1992:i:1:p:329-352. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.