We consider the motion of an overdamped particle in a force field in presence
of an external, adiabatic noise, without the restriction that the noise process
is Gaussian or the stochastic process is Markovian. We examine the condition
for attainment of steady state for this nonequilibrium open system and
calculate the adiabatic noise-induced rate of escape of the particle over a
barrier.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure