Quasi-potentials in the Nonequilibrium Stationary States or a method to get explicit solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi equations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method using canonical transformations to explicitly compute the quasipotential in nonequilibrium stationary states, simplifying the solution of Hamilton-Jacobi equations for certain stochastic systems.

Contribution

It proposes a theoretical scheme to algebraically determine the quasipotential by deforming Hamilton's paths into straight lines via canonical transformations.

Findings

Successfully applied to one-dimensional diffusive models.

Allows explicit computation of quasipotentials under certain conditions.

Simplifies solving Hamilton-Jacobi equations in nonequilibrium systems.

Abstract

We assume that a system at a mesoscopic scale is described by a field $\phi(x,t)$ that evolves by a Langevin equation with a white noise whose intensity is controlled by a parameter $1/\sqrt{\Omega}$. The system stationary state distribution in the small noise limit ($\Omega\rightarrow\infty$) is of the form $P_{st}[\phi]\simeq\exp(-\Omega V_0[\phi])$ where $V_0[\phi]$ is called the {\it quasipotential}. $V_0$ is the unknown of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Therefore, $V_0$ can be written as an action computed along a path that is the solution from Hamilton's equation that typically cannot be solved explicitly. This paper presents a theoretical scheme that builds a suitable canonical transformation that permits us to do such integration by deforming the original path into a straight line. We show that this can be done when a set of conditions on the canonical transformation and the model's dynamics are fulfilled. In such cases, we can get the quasipotential algebraically. We apply the scheme to several one-dimensional nonequilibrium models as the diffusive and reaction-diffusion systems.