Large deviations and a Kramers' type law for self-stabilizing diffusions

International audienceWe investigate exit times from domains of attraction for the motion of a self-stabilized particle travelling in a geometric (potential type) landscape and perturbed by Brownian noise of small amplitude. Self-stabilization is mediated by an ensemble-average attraction adding on to the individual potential drift, where the particle is supposed to be suspended in a large population of identical ones. A Kramers' type law for the particle's exit from the potential's domains of attraction and a large deviations principle for the self-stabilizing diffusion are proved. It turns out that the exit law for the self-stabilizing diffusion coincides with the exit law of a potential diffusion without self-stabilization with a drift component perturbed by average attraction. We show that self-stabilization may substantially delay the exit from domains of attraction, and that the exit location may be completely different