Phase transitions in large deviations of reset processes

Abstract

We study the large deviations of additive quantities, such as energy or current, in stochastic processes with intermittent reset. Via a mapping from a discrete-time reset process to the Poland–Scheraga model for DNA denaturation, we derive conditions for observing first-order or continuous dynamical phase transitions in the fluctuations of such quantities and confirm these conditions on simple random walk examples. These results apply to reset Markov processes, but also show more generally that subleading terms in generating functions can lead to non-analyticities in large deviation functions of ‘compound processes’ or ‘random evolutions’ switching stochastically between two or more subprocesses.