Abstract

Noise is known to profoundly affect the switching behavior of bistable systems. Deterministically (noise power ∈=0), upswitching can occur only for input parameters above a threshold value, and the average switching time 〈τ〉 is given by 〈τ〉~β^−1/2 (β denotes the distance from threshold). In contrast, in the presence of noise (∈ > 0) there is also switching below threshold. For the case |β| >> ∈ (far below threshold) this is described by Kramers escape rate 〈τ〉 ~ exp(β^3/2/∈).

© 1991 Optical Society of America