Symmetry breaking of fluctuation dynamics by noise color

Activated escape is investigated for systems that are driven by noise whose power spectrum peaks at a finite frequency. Analytic theory and analog and digital experiments show that the system dynamics during escape exhibit a symmetry-breaking transition as the width of the fluctuational spectral peak is varied. For double-well potentials, even a small asymmetry may result in a parametrically large difference of the activation energies for escape from different wells.