Speaker:

Mark Dykman

Title:

Critical Exponents in Activated Escape of Nonequilibrium System

Abstract:

For many physical applications it is important to understand decay of metastable states close to bifurcation points. In the corresponding parameter range the activation energy of escape scales as a power of the distance to the bifurcation point. We show that nonequilibrium systems often have several scaling regions, with different critical exponents. Examples include underdamped systems and periodically modulated systems. The scaling behavior and exponent crossover characterize both classical noise-induced escape and escape due to quantum fluctuations. Implications of these results for quantum measurements will be briefly discussed.

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