Uniform Estimates for Metastable Transition Times in a Coupled Bistable System

Abstract

We consider a coupled bistable $N$-particle system on $\mathbb{R}^N$ driven by a Brownian noise, with a strong coupling corresponding to the synchronised regime. Our aim is to obtain sharp estimates on the metastable transition times between the two stable states, both for fixed $N$ and in the limit when $N$ tends to infinity, with error estimates uniform in $N$. These estimates are a main step towards a rigorous understanding of the metastable behavior of infinite dimensional systems, such as the stochastically perturbed Ginzburg-Landau equation. Our results are based on the potential theoretic approach to metastability.