1. Introduction
Currently, nonlinear stochastic phenomena such as noise-induced transitions [
1,
2], stochastic excitement [
3,
4,
5], noise-induced crisis [
6,
7], stochastic bifurcations [
8,
9], noise-induced chaos [
10,
11], stochastic and coherence resonances [
12,
13,
14] are being actively studied in various fields of natural sciences. One of the key mechanisms of such effects is associated with the transition of random trajectories through separatrices detaching basins of coexisting attractors. For the parametric analysis of the conditions causing such transitions and the estimation of the corresponding critical values of the intensity of random disturbances that generate them, a new fairly general geometric approach has been used, based on the method of confidence domains [
15,
16,
17].
The main idea of this approach is as follows. As the noise intensity increases, the size of the confidence domain increases. The critical value of the noise intensity is found from the condition of the intersection of the confidence domain and the separatrix. The key parameter that determines the configuration of the confidence domain is the stochastic sensitivity of the attractor [
18,
19]. Initially, the stochastic sensitivity technique was introduced in connection with the approximation [
20] of a quasipotential [
21] in the vicinity of an attractor. Currently, this technique has been developed for regular and chaotic attractors of both continuous and discrete systems (see, e.g. [
22,
23,
24]). The stochastic sensitivity technique and the associated confidence domains method are actively used in the analysis of nonlinear stochastic phenomena [
25,
26,
27,
28] and control problems [
29,
30].
Using the stochastic sensitivity technique, an approximation of the mean square deviations of random states of a stochastic system from the deterministic attractor is constructed. Although formally this technique is applicable to both the case of additive and parametric noise, however, in the case of parametric noise, the error in the corresponding approximations may be such that the prediction made on the basis of this approximation may turn out to be incorrect.
This paper is devoted to the problem of approximation of probabilistic distributions of random states around stable equilibria of stochastic differential Ito’s equations with general multiplicative noise. Using first approximation systems, we construct an approximation of mean square deviations that explicitly takes into account the presence of parametric noise. This more accurate approximation is compared with an approximation based on the stochastic sensitivity technique. General mathematical results are illustrated with examples.
2. Mean Square Analysis of Stochastic Equilibria
Consider a nonlinear autonomous system of ordinary differential equations
where
x is an
n-dimensional vector and
is a sufficiently smooth
n-vector function. It is assumed that the system (
1) has an exponentially stable equilibrium
.
Definition 1. The equilibrium
is called
exponentially stable in system (
1) if for some neighborhood
of
there exist constants
such that for all
it holds that
where
is a solution of the system (
1) with the initial condition
Here,
is the Euclidean norm.
Along with the deterministic system (
1), let us consider the stochastic Ito system
where
are sufficiently smooth
n-vector functions,
are scalar standard independent Wiener processes. The functions
model the dependence of multiplicative disturbances on the system state.
Solutions of the stochastic system (
2), leaving the deterministic equilibrium
under the influence of random disturbances, form some probability distribution. It is assumed that the probabilistic distribution of the states of system (
2) stabilizes. The corresponding stable stationary distribution density satisfies the Fokker-Planck-Kolmogorov equation [
21,
31]. It is known that in the general case it is very difficult to directly use this equation to describe probability distributions, even for two-dimensional systems. Here, the apparatus of first approximation systems is useful.
2.1. First Approximation System and Its Mean Square Analysis
Let us consider the deviation
of the random state
x of the system (
2) from the exponentially stable equilibrium
of the system (
1). Dynamics of the variable
z is governed by the following first approximation linear system:
where
In our mean square analysis of the system (
3) solutions, we will use first (
m) and second (
M) moments:
. Dynamics of these deterministic characteristics is described by the following equations:
To find an approximation of the dispersion of stationary distributed random states of the nonlinear stochastic system (
2) around the deterministic equilibrium
, we will use stationary solutions of the system (
4), (
5).
Due to exponential stability of the equilibrium
, it holds that
, where
are eigenvalues of the matrix
F. In these circumstances, the system (
4) has a unique stationary stable solution
. Substituting
into (
5), we get
So, the matrix
of the stationary solution of the equation (
6) satisfies the following algebraic equation:
Let us consider a deviation
where
is a solution of the equation (
6). For the function
, one get the homogeneous equation
The matrix
is the matrix of second moments
for solutions
of linear homogeneous stochastic equation
Thus, the question about stability of the stationary solution
of the equation (
6) is reduced to the equivalent question about the exponential mean square stability of the trivial solution
of the stochastic system (
9).
Definition 2. Solution
of the stochastic system (
9) is called
exponentially stable in mean square, if there exist constants
such that for all
it holds that
where
is a solution of the system (
9) with the initial condition
.
Let us consider the matrix
and operators
Rewrite equations (
6), (
7), and (
8) as follows:
Note that the existence of the operator
follows from the condition
.
Basic theoretical connections are presented in the following theorem.
Theorem 1. The following statements are equivalent:
(a) System (
10) has a stationary exponentially stable solution
satisfying (
11);
(b) The solution
of the system (
12) is exponentially stable;
(c) The solution
of the stochastic system (
9) is exponentially stable in mean square;
(d) It holds that and , where is the spectral radius of the operator .
The statements of this theorem were proven or follow from more general results presented in [
32,
33,
34,
35].
Remark. In the one-dimensional case (
), we have
and the condition
has an explicit parametric representation:
In this case, for the mean square variance of random states around the equilibrium
the following estimation can be written:
2.2. Asymptotics for the Case of Weak Noise, Stochastic Sensitivity of the Equilibrium
Consider the stochastic system
where
is a scalar small parameter of the disturbance intensity. For this system, the equation (
11) for the covariance matrix
M of the equilibrium
has the form
Let us study the dependence of the solution
of this equation on the parameter
. Let
be the solution to the equation
Then
For
, one can write the following decomposition:
For small
, it holds that
As a result, for the matrix function
we get the expansion in powers of the small parameter:
In this series, the matrix
plays an important role in the asymptotic analysis of the spread of random states around the equilibrium. Because of
, this matrix characterizes the stochastic sensitivity of the equilibrium to the impact of weak noise. Thus, in the first approximation, we have
where
W is a solution of the following equation
If the noise in the system (
14) does not depend on the state, then
and the first approximation coincides with the exact value:
In general, using
W as an approximation for
one get an underestimation of the covariance of random states. Indeed, since the operator
is positive, the inequality
is valid.
In one-dimensional case, the stochastic sensitivity of the equilibrium
for the system (
14) is given by the formula
3. Examples
Let us consider how these theoretical results can be applied to the approximation of mean square deviation of random states from the equilibrium in some stochastic systems.
Example 1. Consider a simple one-dimensional stochastic system
where
and
are non-negative parameters,
is the intensity of random disturbances,
are uncorrelated scalar Wiener processes. The parameters
and
specify the weights of additive and multiplicative disturbances, accordingly.
For
, the corresponding deterministic system (with
) has an exponentially stable equilibrium
Second moments
of deviations of solutions
from the equilibrium satisfy the equation
This equation has a stationary solution
Following the decomposition (
16), for weak noise
has the following asymptotics
where
W characterizes the stochastic sensitivity of the equilibrium
. Here,
Wy satisfies (see (
18)) the equation:
Using
W one can write the first approximation for the function
:
Formally, the approximation
is defined for any
while the approximated function
is defined only for
In absence of multiplicative noise
), the values
and
M are identical. At
, they can essentially differ.
This difference is clearly seen in
Figure 1 where plots of the functions
M (solid line) and
(dashed line) are shown versus parameter
a. Note that the approximation
is always less than
M (this fact was shown above for the general case). Moreover, in the interval
where the approximation gives finite values, the original function is not defined at all: the second moments
tend to infinity. In the interval
, the approximation error monotonically increases and tends to infinity as it approaches the bifurcation value
. For the relative error, an explicit representation can be written:
Let us continue the comparison of these two methods for estimating the dispersion of random states around the equilibrium using the two-dimensional system as an example.
Example 2. Consider the van der Pol model with hard excitation of self-oscillations:
Here,
is the intensity of the additive noise,
is the intensity of the multiplicative noise, and
are scalar standard independent Wiener processes.
Let us fix
. For this set of parameters, the deterministic system (
20) with
is bistable and exhibits the coexisting attractors: the stable equilibrium
and stable limit cycle. Basins of these attractors are separated by the orbit of the unstable limit cycle. In
Figure 2a and
Figure 3a, the equilibrium is shown by black filled circle, the stable cycle is plotted by blue curve, and the unstable cycle (the separatrix) is shown by red curve.
Let us consider the behavior of trajectories of the stochastic system (
20) solutions starting at the equilibrium
. Under the influence of weak random disturbances, trajectories leave the stable equilibrium and form a stationary probability distribution concentrated in a small neighborhood of the origin. This type of dynamics corresponds to the unexcited mode of the oscillator (see
Figure 2 for
).
As the noise intensity increases, random trajectories cross the separatrix (unstable limit cycle) and continue to oscillate near the stable cycle. This means a transition to the excitation mode (see
Figure 2 for
).
For the analytical approximation of the dispersion of random states, we will use theory presented above.
For the system (
20), parameters of the equation (
7) are following:
Now, we can write the matrix equation (
7) as the following system for the elements
of the symmetric matrix
M:
From this system, we have solution
Thus, the matrix
M that defines mean square deviation of random states from the equilibrium
is
Note that the asymptotic method of stochastic sensitivity gives for mean square deviation another approximation:
The difference in these approximations can lead to the qualitative differences in the prediction of the results of the noise influence. Let us consider how these two estimations work in the context of the confidence domains method. For diagonal
-matrices, the equation of the confidence ellipse is written as
Here,
P is fiducial probability.
Confidence ellipses are effectively used in predicting noise-induced transitions through the separatrix.
Figure 4 shows two confidence ellipses constructed using the matrices
M (larger ellipse) and
(smaller ellipse) for the stochastic system (
20) with
The larger ellipse captures the basin of attraction of the limit cycle, which allows us to make a prediction about the generation of large-amplitude oscillations (excitation mode). The smaller ellipse is entirely contained in the basin of attraction of the stable equilibrium and therefore predicts the unexcited mode of the oscillator. As we see, an error in estimating the second moments can lead to qualitative errors in solving important prediction problems.