gst: nonreciprocal dynamics with weak noise: aperiodic “Escher cycles” and their quasipotential landscape.

<< ️(AA) present an explicit construction of the Freidlin-Wentzell quasipotential of a stochastic system with two degrees of freedom and nonreciprocal interactions. This model undergoes noise-induced transitions between four metastable attractors, forming recurrent but aperiodic “Escher cycles,” similar to the cyclic nucleation dynamics observed in the nonreciprocal Ising model. >>

<< (AA) calculate the quasipotential analytically to first order in nonreciprocality. (They) characterize it along a one-dimensional reaction coordinate that connects the attractors, and (They) also obtain the full two-dimensional landscape, at leading order in perturbation theory. >>

<< ️The resulting landscapes feature flat regions and extended plateaus, together with nondifferentiable switching lines. These singular structures arise from two geometric mechanisms: the handover of dominance between competing transition paths, and the competition between basins of attraction. The system provides a rare case where the geometry of nonequilibrium rare events can be fully resolved, and a simple analytically tractable example of a quasipotential in more than one coordinate that captures a rich set of nonequilibrium features. >>

Janik Schüttler, Robert L. Jack, Michael E. Cates. Nonreciprocal dynamics with weak noise: Aperiodic “Escher cycles” and their quasipotential landscape. Phys. Rev. E 114, 024104. Aug 3, 2026.

https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/slp9-rd27

Also: noise, random, transition, singularity, escape, in https://www.inkgmr.net/kwrds.html 

Keywords: gst, noise, randomness, stochasticity, transitions, singularity, nonreciprocal interactions, noise-induced transitions, metastable attractors, Escher cycles, perturbation theory, escape problems, large deviation & rare event statistics.