Eric Vanden-Eijnden 2026-11-05
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Eric Vanden-Eijnden developed the geometric minimum action with Matthias Heymann. The method computes likely transition paths between states exhibiting metastability in weakly noisy dynamical systems. Reformulating the Freidlin--Wentzell action on curves removes an unnecessary dependence on the speed at which a candidate path is traversed, making the free-time optimization more tractable.[ref]
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The geometric minimum action method: A least action principle on the space of curves by Matthias Heymann and Eric Vanden-Eijnden 2026-11-05
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Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 61, 1052–1117. DOI: doi.org/10.1002/cpa.20238 . Author-hosted PDF. Sections 1.1–1.3: action admissibility, noise convention, free-time quasipotential and geometric reformulation. Wiki uses drift a and covariance D to avoid the paper's a/b notation ambiguity; the time-reparameterization and gradient examples are explicitly derived.
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