Emerging universality classes in thermally-assisted activation of interacting diffusive systems: A perturbative hydrodynamic approach

Abstract

Thermal activation of a particle from a deep potential trap follows the Arrhenius law. Recently, this result was generalized for interacting diffusive particles in the trap, revealing two universality classes -- the Arrhenius class and the excluded volume class. The result was demonstrated with the aid of numerical analysis. Here, we present a perturbative hydrodynamic approach to analytically validate the existence and range of validity for the two universality classes.