| Abstract: |
| Prediction of escape from a potential well, or transition from one to another, has broad application in multiple degree-of-freedom systems, including chemical systems. In such systems, however, one needs to consider realistic damping, stochastic forcing, and/or gyroscopic forces. In this talk, we study the transition dynamics in a broad range of systems, extending the framework of tube dynamics, a close relative to transition state theory, to the case of dissipation and gyroscopic forces, proving the existence of ellipsoid-like structures bounding the initial conditions of trajectories that escape from one side of a rank-1 saddle point to another, i.e., across a transition state in the presence of dissipation. Furthermore, we discuss experimental validation of this approach, confirming the underlying phase space conduits that mediate transitions and the predicted phase space flux as a function of excess energy. Experiment is found to agree with theory to within 1 percent, suggesting the robustness of phase space conduits of transition, despite the presence of small dissipation. In fact, phase space conduits of transition might be among the most robust phase space features found in experiments of multi-dimensional systems, given the fragility of other structures to dissipation. |
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