Random perturbations of systems with periodic impulse effects
The principal aim of the present work is to explore limit theorems for small random perturbations of periodically kicked dynamical systems, in the limit of vanishing noise intensity. Recasting our system, which is described heuristically by an ordinary differential equation forced by a periodic train of delta spikes, in terms of an impulsive system with resetting, we consider small state-dependent Brownian perturbations of this system and explore the zero noise limit on finite, but arbitrary, time horizons. For the resulting nonlinear stochastic system with impulse effects, we prove convergence to the underlying deterministic nonlinear impulsive system as the noise goes to zero. More importantly, we prove convergence of the rescaled fluctuation process about the deterministic limit, in a strong pathwise sense on finite time intervals, to a limiting fluctuation process governed by a linear time-dependent stochastic differential equation in between impulses and a linear time-dependent resetting map at impulses. In each of these cases, we are able to obtain rigorous estimates on the remainders. Our results thus provide quantitative tools to accurately and efficiently approximate small random fluctuations of the original nonlinear stochastic impulsive system about the deterministic limit in terms of linear, albeit time-inhomogeneous, surrogates. The results are illustrated numerically for two different examples: a periodically kicked nonlinear pendulum with state-dependent kick sizes and a FitzHugh-Nagumo system subject to periodic kicks.