Signatures of Noise Enhanced Stability in Metastable States

TL;DR

This paper investigates how noise can unexpectedly stabilize metastable states in nonlinear systems, using mean first passage time and growth rate coefficient as indicators of noise enhanced stability.

Contribution

It introduces two independent measures to identify noise enhanced stability in metastable states, providing new tools for analyzing nonlinear physical systems.

Findings

Both mean first passage time and growth rate coefficient show non-monotonic behavior with noise.

These measures serve as signatures to detect noise enhanced stability.

The study offers alternative methods to evaluate metastability in physical systems.

Abstract

The lifetime of a metastable state in the transient dynamics of an overdamped Brownian particle is analyzed, both in terms of the mean first passage time and by means of the mean growth rate coefficient. Both quantities feature non monotonic behaviors as a function of the noise intensity, and are independent signatures of the noise enhanced stability effect. They can therefore be alternatively used to evaluate and estimate the presence of this phenomenon, which characterizes metastability in nonlinear physical systems.