Asymptotic distributions of Periodically Driven Stochastic Systems

Abstract

We study the large-time behaviour of Brownian particles moving through a viscous medium in a confined potential, and which are further subjected to position-dependent driving forces that are periodic in time. We focus on the case where these driving forces are rapidly oscillating with an amplitude that is not necessarily small. We develop a perturbative method for the high-frequency regime to find the large-time behavior of periodically driven stochastic systems. The asymptotic distribution of Brownian particles is then determined to second order. To first order, these particles are found to execute small-amplitude oscillations around an effective static potential which can have interesting forms.

8 pages; Included an e.g. in the last section; added references; final version in two columns