Stability measures in metastable states with Gaussian colored noise

Abstract

We present a study of the escape time from a metastable state of an overdamped Brownian particle in the presence of colored noise generated by Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We analyze the role of the correlation time on the enhancement of the mean first passage time through a potential barrier and on the behavior of the mean growth rate coefficient as a function of the noise intensity. We observe the noise-enhanced stability effect for all the initial unstable states used and for all values of the correlation time c investigated. We can distinguish two dynamical regimes characterized by weak and strong correlated noises, depending on the value of c with respect to the relaxation time of the system.