Breaking the chain

We consider the motion of a Brownian particle in R$\mathbb{R}$, moving between a particle fixed at the origin and another moving deterministically away at slow speed ε>0$\epsilon >0$. The middle particle interacts with its neighbours via a potential of finite range b>0$b>0$, with a unique minimum at a>0$a>0$, where b<2a$b<2a$. We say that the chain of particles breaks on the left- or right-hand side when the middle particle is at a distance greater than b$b$ from its left or right neighbour, respectively. We study the asymptotic location of the first break of the chain in the limit of small noise, in the case where ε=ε(σ)$\epsilon =\epsilon \left(\sigma \right)$ and σ>0$\sigma >0$ is the noise intensity.