Abstract
The decay of metastable states of a system obeying an -variable Fokker-Planck equation is considered by evaluating the mean first-passage time using the asymptotic method of Schuss and Matkowsky. The statistics of the first-passage time in the small-noise high-barrier limit is shown to follow , where , independent of the number of degrees of freedom, . The time in the low-barrier, high-noise limit is also calculated. The hysteresis window for the control-parameter sweep rate is generalized to multivariate systems. These general results are applied to a model of a two-mode laser, where . A comparison with recent results of Mandel and co-workers is made, and experimental tests of the predictions are suggested.
- Received 8 June 1983
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.29.1315
©1984 American Physical Society