Entropic noise-induced nonequilibrium transition

We consider a system of Brownian particles confined in a two-dimensional bilobal enclosure. Varying cross-section of the confinement results in an effective entropic potential in reduced dimension. We show that the system may undergo an entropic noise-induced transition when the shape of the stationary probability density changes qualitatively from bimodal to trimodal type under the influence of a multiplicative noise. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3505454]