Action functional and quasi‐potential for the burgers equation in a bounded interval

Consider the viscous Burgers equation u_t + f(u)_x = εu_xx on the interval 0,1] with the inhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions u(t,0) = ρ₀, u(t,1) = ρ₁. The flux f is the function f(u) = u(1 ? u), ε > 0 is the viscosity, and the boundary data satisfy 0 < ρ₀ < ρ₁ < 1. We examine the quasi‐potential corresponding to an action functional arising from nonequilibrium statistical mechanical models associated with the above equation. We provide a static variational formula for the quasi‐potential and characterize the optimal paths for the dynamical problem. In contrast with previous cases, for small enough viscosity, the variational problem defining the quasi‐potential admits more than one minimizer. This phenomenon is interpreted as a nonequilibrium phase transition and corresponds to points where the superdifferential of the quasi‐potential is not a singleton. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.