Related papers: Metastability and small eigenvalues in Markov chai…
We study a large class of reversible Markov chains with discrete state space and transition matrix $P_N$. We define the notion of a set of {\it metastable points} as a subset of the state space $\G_N$ such that (i) this set is reached from…
In this paper we consider Markov chains with transition rates that depend on a small parameter $\varepsilon$. Under a mild assumption on the asymptotics of these transition rates, we describe the behavior of the chain at various…
Metastability is a physical phenomenon ubiquitous in first order phase transitions. A fruitful mathematical way to approach this phenomenon is the study of rare transitions Markov chains. For Metropolis chains associated with Statistical…
We consider continuous-space, discrete-time Markov chains on $\mathbb{R}^d$, that admit a finite number $N$ of metastable states. Our main motivation for investigating these processes is to analyse random Poincar\'e maps, which describe…
We consider a simple but important class of metastable discrete time Markov chains, which we call perturbed Markov chains. Basically, we assume that the transition matrices depend on a parameter $\varepsilon$, and converge as $\varepsilon$.…
We propose a new definition of metastability of Markov processes on countable state spaces. We obtain sufficient conditions for a sequence of processes to be metastable. In the reversible case these conditions are expressed in terms of the…
A definition of metastable states applicable to arbitrary finite state Markov processes satisfying detailed balance is discussed. In particular, we identify a crucial condition that distinguishes genuine metastable states from other types…
We consider continuous-time Markov chains which display a family of wells at the same depth. We provide sufficient conditions which entail the convergence of the finite-dimensional distributions of the order parameter to the ones of a…
A perturbation framework is developed to analyze metastable behavior in stochastic processes with random internal and external states. The process is assumed to be under weak noise conditions, and the case where the deterministic limit is…
In this paper, we consider semi-Markov processes whose transition times and transition probabilities depend on a small parameter $\varepsilon$. Understanding the asymptotic behavior of such processes is needed in order to study the…
We establish metastability in the sense of Lebowitz and Penrose under practical and simple hypothesis for (families of) Markov chains on finite configuration space in some asymptotic regime, including the case of configuration space size…
We consider a random walk with catastrophes which was introduced to model population biology. It is known that this Markov chain gets eventually absorbed at $0$ for all parameter values. Recently, it has been shown that this chain exhibits…
We review recent results on the metastable behavior of continuous-time Markov chains derived through the characterization of Markov chains as unique solutions of martingale problems.
It is known that state-dependent, multi-step Lyapunov bounds lead to greatly simplified verification theorems for stability for large classes of Markov chain models. This is one component of the "fluid model" approach to stability of…
We study irreducible time-homogenous Markov chains with finite state space in discrete time. We obtain results on the sensitivity of the stationary distribution and other statistical quantities with respect to perturbations of the…
Understanding and predicting how complex systems respond to external perturbations is a central challenge in nonequilibrium statistical physics. Here we consider continuous-time Markov networks, which we subject to perturbations along a…
We prove the metastable behavior of reversible Markov processes on finite state spaces under minimal conditions on the jump rates. To illustrate the result we deduce the metastable behavior of the Ising model with a small magnetic field at…
We present a formalism to describe slowly decaying systems in the context of finite Markov chains obeying detailed balance. We show that phase space can be partitioned into approximately decoupled regions, in which one may introduce…
We presented in \cite{bl2,bl7} an approach to derive the metastable behavior of continuous-time Markov chains. We assumed in these articles that the Markov chains visit points in the time scale in which it jumps among the metastable sets.…
We examine two analytical characterisation of the metastable behavior of a Markov chain. The first one expressed in terms of its transition probabilities, and the second one in terms of its large deviations rate functional. Consider a…