Cooperative surmounting of bottlenecks

摘要: The physics of activated escape objects out a metastable state plays key role in diverse scientific areas involving chemical kinetics, diffusion and dislocation motion solids, nucleation, electrical transport, flux lines superconductors, charge density waves, transport processes macromolecules, to name but few. underlying present the multidimensional extension Kramers problem single Brownian particle. In comparison latter case, however, dynamics ensuing from interactions many coupled units can lead intriguing novel phenomena that are not when only degree freedom is involved. this review we report on variety such exhibited by systems consisting chains interacting presence potential barriers. In first part consider recent developments case deterministic driving cooperative nonlinear states. ability undergo spontaneous conformational transitions self-organised escape. mechanism at work energies become re-arranged, while keeping total energy conserved, forming localised modes turn trigger We scenarios significantly enhanced noise-free rates if compared noise-assisted case. The second deals with collective directed particles overcoming energetic barriers periodic landscapes. Escape both time-homogeneous time-dependent driven considered for emergence motion. It shown ballistic channels immersed associated high-dimensional phase space source long-range transport.