Stochastically induced coherence in bistable systems

Abstract

A new type of resonance phenomenon in a class of bistable oscillators driven by a periodic dichotomous noise process is described. The phenomenon manifests itself as troughs or peaks in the stationary density and has its origin in the appearance of periodic orbits in the noisy dynamics. The stationary density exhibits many self-similar scaling features as the system parameters are tuned, and these features are discussed. Since the noise process is easy to implement and the phenomenon is quite general, it should be possible to observe such resonances in experiments.