Eur. Phys. J. B 3, 253-256 (1998)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050310

Quenching problem of globally coupled bistable stochastic systems with finite size

¹ Physics Department, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
² Center of Theoretical Physics, CCAST (World Laboratory), Beijing 8730, China

Corresponding author: ^a xdwen@email.bnu.edu.cn

Received: 3 July 1997
Revised: 4 December 1997
Accepted: 15 January 1998
Published online: 15 May 1998

Abstract

The transient process of globally coupled bistable systems from an unstable state to metastable state (i.e, quenching process) is studied analytically for small noise intensity. The influences of noise intensity and system size on the system evolution are investigated. The problem of a large number of coupled Langevin equations is reduced to a simple problem of a one-dimensional ordinary differential equation, subject to a white noise with intensity explicitly given. The analytical results are fully confirmed by direct numerical computations.