Rare switching events in non-stationary systems

Nils B. Becker; Pieter Rein ten Wolde

doi:10.1063/1.4704812

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arXiv · 1201.3824

Rare switching events in non-stationary systems

Nils B. Becker·Pieter Rein ten Wolde

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Abstract

Physical systems with many degrees of freedom can often be understood in terms of transitions between a small number of metastable states. For time-homogeneous systems with short-term memory these transitions are fully characterized by a set of rate constants. We consider the question how to extend such a coarse-grained description to non-stationary systems and to systems with finite memory. We identify the physical regimes in which time-dependent rates are meaningful, and state microscopic expressions that can be used to measure both externally time-dependent and history-dependent rates in microscopic simulations.

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Nils B. Becker, Pieter Rein ten Wolde. 2012-01-18. Rare switching events in non-stationary systems. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4704812

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