Γ-limit for transition paths of maximal probability

Chemical reactions can be modeled via diffusion processes conditioned to make a transition between specified molecular configurations representing the state of the system before and after the chemical reaction. In particular the model of Brownian dynamics--gradient flow subject to additive noise--is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of statistical physics 2012-03, Vol.146 (5), p.955
Main Authors: Pinski, F.J, Stuart, A.M, Theil, F
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Chemical reactions can be modeled via diffusion processes conditioned to make a transition between specified molecular configurations representing the state of the system before and after the chemical reaction. In particular the model of Brownian dynamics--gradient flow subject to additive noise--is frequently used. If the chemical reaction is specified to take place on a given time interval, then the most likely path taken by the system is a minimizer of the Onsager-Machlup functional. The Γ-limit of this functional is determined explicitly in the case where the temperature is small and the transition time scales as the inverse temperature. Keywords Onsager-Machlup * Gamma-convergence
ISSN:0022-4715
DOI:10.1007/sl0955-012-0443-8