Comparing the roles of time overhead and spatial dimensions on optimal resetting rate vanishing transitions, in Brownian processes with potential bias and stochastic resetting

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how spatial dimensions and time delays influence the occurrence of vanishing transitions in the optimal resetting rate of Brownian processes with potential bias, revealing contrasting effects of these factors.

Contribution

It provides an analytical study of how spatial dimensions and time delays regulate discontinuous transitions in optimal resetting rates in biased diffusion models.

Findings

Increasing dimensions counteract the effects of refractory periods on transitions.

Discontinuous transitions are influenced differently by spatial dimensions and time delays.

Analytical models with drift and barriers elucidate these effects.

Abstract

The strategy of stochastic resetting is known to expedite the first passage to a target, in diffusive systems. Consequently, the mean first passage time is minimized at an optimal resetting parameter. With Poisson resetting, vanishing transitions in the optimal resetting rate $r_* \to 0$ (continuously or discontinuously) have been found for various model systems, under the further influence of an external potential. In this paper, we explore how the discontinuous transitions in this context are regulated by two other factors -- the first one is spatial dimensions within which the diffusion is embedded, and the second is the time delay introduced before restart. We investigate the effect of these factors by studying analytically two types of models, one with an ordinary drift and another with a barrier, and both types having two absorbing boundaries. In the case of barrier potential, we find that the effect of increasing dimensions on the transitions is quite the opposite of increasing refractory period.