Escape rate of an active Brownian particle over a potential barrier

TL;DR

This paper investigates how an active Brownian particle escapes over a potential barrier, revealing a nonmonotonic relationship between escape rate and noise intensity due to limit cycle dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of escape dynamics for active particles in nonlinear potentials, emphasizing the role of limit cycles and noise stabilization.

Findings

Escape rate varies nonmonotonically with noise intensity.

Active particles escape from limit cycles, not fixed points.

Noise can stabilize the particle on the limit cycle.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of an active Brownian particle with a nonlinear friction function located in a spatial cubic potential. For strong but finite damping, the escape rate of the particle over the spatial potential barrier shows a nonmonotonic dependence on the noise intensity. We relate this behavior to the fact that the active particle escapes from a limit cycle rather than from a fixed point and that a certain amount of noise can stabilize the sojourn of the particle on this limit cycle.