Reply to “Comment on ‘Nonstationary optimal paths and tails of prehistory probability density in multistable stochastic systems’ ”

Abstract

We argue that the validity of the WKB approach for calculating nonequilibrium properties of a nonlinear stochastic system requires an additional criterion involving the time interval, compared with the standard WKB criterion considered by Mannella [R. Mannella, Phys. Rev. E 58, 2479 (1999)]. In order to clarify the situation, we compare the WKB solution with the direct numerical solution of the Fokker-Plank equation.