Anomalous Escape Governed by Thermal1/fNoise

Abstract

We present an analytic study for subdiffusive escape of overdamped particles out of a cusp-shaped parabolic potential well which are driven by thermal, fractional Gaussian noise with a 1/omega 1-alpha power spectrum. This long-standing challenge becomes mathematically tractable by use of a generalized Langevin dynamics via its corresponding non-Markovian, time-convolutionless master equation: We find that the escape is governed asymptotically by a power-law whose exponent depends exponentially on the ratio of barrier height and temperature. This result is in distinct contrast to a description with a corresponding subdiffusive fractional Fokker-Planck approach, thus providing experimentalists an amenable testbed to differentiate between the two escape scenarios.