Metastability in a class of hyperbolic dynamical systems perturbed by heavy-tailed Lévy type noise

We consider a finite dimensional deterministic dynamical system with finitely many local attractors Kι, each of which supports a unique ergodic probability measure Pι, perturbed by a multiplicative non-Gaussian heavy-tailed Lévy noise of small intensity ε > 0. We show that the random system exhibits a metastable behavior: there exists a unique ε-dependent time scale on which the system reminds of a continuous time Markov chain on the set of the invariant measures Pι. In particular our approach covers the case of dynamical systems of Morse–Smale type, whose attractors consist of points and limit cycles, perturbed by multiplicative α-stable Lévy noise in the Itô, Stratonovich and Marcus sense. As examples we consider α-stable Lévy perturbations of the Duffing equation and Pareto perturbations of a biochemical birhythmic system with two nested limit cycles.