Langevin dynamics with a tilted periodic potential (Q358669)

This article considers the dynamics of a Newtonian particle moving on a tilted periodic potential and subject to both a viscous damping and a heat bath. The potential is tilted by means of the introduction of a constant drift term. In the absence of damping, constant drift and heat bath, there exist bounded periodic and unbounded solutions separated by heteroclinic orbits connecting the maxima of the periodic potential. By choosing a non-vanishing but small enough damping, it is possible to find a concrete value of this constant drift such that confined and escaping solutions coexist, and they are again separated by heteroclinic connections among the local maxima of the tilted potential. The presence of the heat bath, which is introduced in the dynamical system as an additive white noise, affects the dynamics on the heteroclinic orbits. For an infinitesimal amplitude of the white noise, particles travelling along the heteroclinic connections leave the maximum they arrive to, with equal probability in either direction. This creates a current downhill that stops after a finite number of wells is crossed, with probability one. The authors prove this result for sub-exponential time scales. As they argue in their work, for exponentially long time scales, large deviations drive a Kramer diffusion that renders all trajectories unconfined.