Inferring intermediate states by leveraging the many-body Arrhenius law

Abstract

Metastable states appear as long-lived intermediate states in various natural transport phenomena, which are governed by energy landscapes. As such, these intermediate metastable states dominate the system’s dynamics at coarse grained times. Moreover, they can strongly influence the overall pathways through which the energy landscape is explored. Therefore, quantifying these metastabilities is crucial for uncovering the key details of the underlying landscape. Here, we introduce a robust method based on a generalized many-body Arrhenius law to identify metastable states in escape problems involving interacting particles with excluded volume. Experimental platforms such as colloidal transport or macromolecular translocation through biological pores can offer promising settings to validate our predictions.