Survival probability and first-passage-time statistics of a Wiener process driven by an exponential time-dependent drift

Abstract

The survival probability and the first-passage-time statistics are important quantities in different fields. The Wiener process is the simplest stochastic process with continuous variables, and important results can be explicitly found from it. The presence of a constant drift does not modify its simplicity; however, when the process has a time-dependent component the analysis becomes difficult. In this work we analyze the statistical properties of the Wiener process with an absorbing boundary, under the effect of an exponential time-dependent drift. Based on the backward Fokker-Planck formalism we set the time-inhomogeneous equation and conditions that rule the diffusion of the corresponding survival probability. We propose as the solution an expansion series in terms of the intensity of the exponential drift, resulting in a set of recurrence equations. We explicitly solve the expansion up to second order and comment on higher-order solutions. The first-passage-time density function arises naturally from the survival probability and preserves the proposed expansion. Explicit results, related properties, and limit behaviors are analyzed and extensively compared to numerical simulations.