Lifetime of metastable states and suppression of noise in Interdisciplinary Physical Models

TL;DR

This paper investigates how external white noise affects the lifetime of metastable states across various physical systems, highlighting phenomena like noise-enhanced stability and resonant activation through theoretical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a unified theoretical framework for noise-induced effects in metastable states across interdisciplinary physical models.

Findings

Noise enhances the stability of metastable states.

Resonant activation suppresses noise effects.

Applicable to Josephson junctions, FitzHugh-Nagumo model, and population dynamics.

Abstract

Transient properties of different physical systems with metastable states perturbed by external white noise have been investigated. Two noise-induced phenomena, namely the noise enhanced stability and the resonant activation, are theoretically predicted in a piece-wise linear fluctuating potential with a metastable state. The enhancement of the lifetime of metastable states due to the noise, and the suppression of noise through resonant activation phenomenon will be reviewed in models of interdisciplinary physics: (i) dynamics of an overdamped Josephson junction; (ii) transient regime of the noisy FitzHugh-Nagumo model; (iii) population dynamics.