Metastability
Metastability and aging are phenomenoma appearing in (stochastic)
dynamical systems that are seriously out of equilibrium. In the
Lecture notes I wrote for a
mini-course I gave in Santiago de Chile you can find an introduction to the
work on this subject that I have undertaken over the last few year in
collaboration with Gerard Ben Arous, Michael, Eckhoff, Veronique
Gayrard, and Markus Klein. There is also a funny
flyer
with some nice pictures.
Lecture notes for my lecture "Markov Prozesse und Metastabilitaet"
at the TU Berlin can be accessed
here.
I update the file as I write it.
Barbara Gentz
has studied metastble systems with time dependent parameters. In such cases
appear new phenomena such as Stochastic Resonance and Hysteresis. Material
on this subject can be found on her
homepage.