Random perturbations of nonlinear oscillators

Abstract

Degenerate white noise perturbations of Hamiltonian systems in $R^2$ are studied. In particular, perturbations of a nonlinear oscillator with 1 degree of freedom are considered. If the oscillator has more than one stable equilibrium, the long time behavior of the system is defined by a diffusion process on a graph. Inside the edges the process is defined by a standard averaging procedure, but to define the process for all $t > 0$ one should add gluing conditions at the vertices. Calculation of the gluing conditions is based on delicate Hormander-type estimates.