Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1783–1786 (1993)Effect of focusing and caustics on exit phenomena in systems lacking detailed balanceReceived 26 May 1993; published in the issue dated 20 September 1993 We study the trajectories followed by a particle weakly perturbed by noise, when escaping from the domain of attraction of a stable fixed point. If the particle’s stationary distribution lacks detailed balance, a focus may occur along the most probable exit path, leading to a breakdown of symmetry (if present). The exit trajectory bifurcates, and the exit location distribution may become ‘‘skewed’’ (non-Gaussian). The weak-noise asymptotics of the mean escape time are also affected. Our methods extend to the study of skewed exit location distributions in stochastic models without symmetry. © 1993 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1783
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1783
PACS:
05.40.+j, 02.50.-r
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