An efficient algorithm to estimate the potential barrier height from noise-induced escape time data

2018/08/11 by Tamás Bódai, Bódai, Tamás
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Scientific Research and Discoveries #cond-mat.stat-mech

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1808.06903

arxiv created 2018/08/11 · arxiv updated 2018/08/22

Abstract

It is a common phenomenon in nature and technology that a system under perturbations exits a regime of its usual dynamics. Often it is possible to define a potential function whereby a potential well can be associated with a usual or persistent dynamics, and a potential barrier needs to be overcome to escape the regime associated with the usual dynamics. We develop an algorithm to determine the potential barrier height experimentally, provided that we have control over the noise strength. We are concerned with the situation when the experiment requires large resources of time or computational power, and wish to find a protocol that provides the best estimate in a given amount of time. The optimal noise strength to use is found to be very simply related to the potential barrier height, and we propose an iterative method for the estimation.

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