Detecting the Most Probable High Dimensional Transition Pathway Based on Optimal Control Theory

Abstract: Many natural systems exhibit phase transition where external environmental conditions spark a shift to a new and sometimes quite different state. Therefore, detecting the behavior of a stochastic dynamic system such as the most probable transition pathway, has made sense.We consider stochastic dynamic systems driven by Brownian motion. Based on variational principle and Onsager-Machlup action functional theory, the variational problem is transformed into deterministic optimal control problem. Different from traditional variational method, optimal control theory can handle high dimensional problems well. This paper describes the following three systems, double well system driven by additive noise, Maire-Stein system driven by multiplicative noise, and Nutrient-Phytoplankton-Nooplanktonr system.For numerical computation, based on Pontryagin's Maximum Principle, we adopt method of successive approximations to compute the optimal solution pathway, which is the most probable transition pathway in the sense of Onsager - Machlup.