Drozdov, Alexander N.Brey Abalo, José JavierDrozdov, Alexander N.2020-05-052020-05-051999-04Drozdov, A.N. y Brey Abalo, J.J. (1999). Decay of metastable states: Mean relaxation time formulation. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 110 (15), 7133-7141.0021-96061089-7690https://hdl.handle.net/11441/96154The mean relaxation time formalism introduced by Nadler and Schulten [J. Chem. Phys. 82, 151 (1985)] in their generalized moment expansion method is extended to a general diffusion process in arbitrary dimensions. The utility of the approach is demonstrated by calculating analytically the rate of noise-induced transitions in a bistable system with an isolated transition point. The rate formula obtained summarizes in a uniform manner much of what had been done before in this field. Limitations of its validity are discussed and a perturbation procedure to systematically improve it is proposed. The validity of our theoretical predictions for the rate is confirmed by comparing with exact numerical results.application/pdf10 p.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttps://doi.org/10.1063/1.478617