Critical manifold of globally coupled overdamped anharmonic oscillators driven by additive Gaussian white noise

We consider an infinite array of globally coupled overdamped anharmonic oscillators subject to additive Gaussian white noise which is closely related to the mean field Φ(4)-Ginzburg-Landau model. We prove the existence of a well-behaved critical manifold in the parameter space which separates a symmetric phase from a symmetry broken phase. Given two of the system parameters, there is a unique critical value of the third. The proof exploits that the critical control parameter a(c) is bounded by its limit values for weak and strong noise. In these limits, the mechanism of symmetry breaking differs. For weak noise, the distribution is Gaussian and the symmetry is broken as the whole distribution is shifted in either the positive or the negative direction. For strong noise, there is a symmetric double-peak distribution and the symmetry is broken as the weights of the peaks become different. We derive an ordinary differential equation whose solution describes the critical manifold. Using a series ansatz to solve this differential equation, we determine the critical manifold for weak and strong noise and compare it to numerical results. We derive analytic expressions for the order parameter and the susceptibility close to the critical manifold.