title: Illustration of transition path theory on a collection of simple examples.
abstract: Transition path theory (TPT) has been recently introduced as a theoretical framework to describe the reaction pathways of rare events between long lived states in complex systems. TPT gives detailed statistical information about the reactive trajectories involved in these rare events, which are beyond the realm of transition state theory or transition path sampling. In this paper the TPT approach is outlined, its distinction from other approaches is discussed, and, most importantly, the main insights and objects provided by TPT are illustrated in detail via a series of low dimensional test problems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Free University Berlin, Arnimallee 2-6, D-14195 Berlin, Germany. metzner@math.fu-berlin.de
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Metzner
authors.forename: Christof
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schütte
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vanden-Eijnden
mesh_terms: D002627:Chemistry, Physical / Q000379:methods*; D004058:Diffusion; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D011336:Probability; D012107:Research Design; D013997:Time Factors