Hopping and phase shifts in noisy periodically driven bistable systems

We consider a periodically driven bistable system in the presence of fluctuations. In a number of recent papers it has been shown that the amplitude of the response of the noisy system to periodic modulations exhibits stochastic resonance, i.e. a resonance-like behavior as a function of the noise intensity. In this paper, we consider the phase shift between the response and the periodic driving. For weak periodic driving, the phase shift also shows a resonance like behaviour as a function of the noise strength, but this effect is shown to be of different origin than the one responsible for stochastic resonance. Furthermore, the phase shift is demonstrated to exhibit a resonance-like behavior as a function of the driving frequency.