Thermal Decay of a Metastable State: the Quasistationary Rate and the Mean Lifetime
12th International Scientific and Technical Conference on Applied Mechanics and Systems Dynamics, Omsk, Russia, 13 - 15 November 2018, vol.1210, (Full Text)
- Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
- Volume: 1210
- Doi Number: 10.1088/1742-6596/1210/1/012051
- City: Omsk
- Country: Russia
- Akdeniz University Affiliated: No
Abstract
In many branches of science, the quasistationary decay rate often is considered to be identical to the inverse mean lifetime of a Brownian particle in a metastable state. We check this presumption numerically modeling the process using the stochastic differential equations (Langevin equations). Our results define the borders of the applicability of this presumption: the ratio of the potential barrier height to the thermal energy is larger than 4. For the smaller values of this ratio, the difference between the mean lifetime and the inverse quasistationary rate achieves several tens percent. This difference depends noticeably upon the strength of dissipation.