Rate processes in nonlinear optical dynamics with many attractors

Kramers' 1940 paper and its successive elaborations have extensively explored the transition rate between two stable situations, that is, in the language of system dynamics, the transition between the basins of attraction of two stable fixed point attractors. In a nonequilibrium system some of the above conditions may be violated, either because one of the two fixed points is unstable, as in the case of transient phenomena, or because both fixed points are unstable, as in the case of heteroclinic chaos, or because the attractors are more complex than fixed points, as in a chaotic dynamics where two or more strange attractors coexist. Furthermore, there is recent experimental evidence of space-time complexity consisting in the alternate or simultaneous oscillation of many modes, each one with its own (possibly chaotic) dynamics. In all the above cases, coexistence of many alternative paths implies a choice, either due to noise or self-triggered by the same interacting degrees of freedom. A review of the above phenomena in the case of nonequilibrium optical systems is here presented, with the aim of stimulating theoretical investigation on these novel rate processes.