Gamma Limit for Transition Paths of Maximal Probability

Abstract

Chemical reactions can be modelled via diffusion processes conditioned to make a transition between specified molecular configurations representing the state of the system before and after the chemical reaction. In particular the model of Brownian dynamics - gradient flow subject to additive noise - is frequently used. If the chemical reaction is specified to take place on a given time interval, then the most likely path taken by the system is a minimizer of the Onsager-Machlup functional. The Gamma limit of this functional is determined in the case where the temperature is small and the transition time scales as the inverse temperatur