Sharp estimates for metastable lifetimes in parabolic SPDEs: Kramers' law and beyond
Sharp estimates for metastable lifetimes in parabolic SPDEs: Kramers' law and beyond
We prove a Kramers-type law for metastable transition times for a class of one-dimensional parabolic stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) with bistable potential. The expected transition time between local minima of the potential energy depends exponentially on the energy barrier to overcome, with an explicit prefactor related to functional determinants. …