\(\Gamma \)-limit for transition paths of maximal probability (Q2429397)

The paper is concerned with the problem of determining the most likely paths taken by a system undergoing a chemical reaction. The model based on a Brownian dynamics represented by a gradient flow subject to an additive noise is employed. The resulting stochastic differential equation is constrained by imposing that the chemical reaction has to take place on a fixed time interval. In such a case, the solution is the minimizer of the Onsager-Machlup functional. The authors determine the \(\Gamma\)-limit of this functional in the case where temperature is low and the transition time scales as the inverse temperature. Moreover, an informal characterization of the \(\Gamma\)-limit is given and motivated by numerical experiments.