Barrier Trees of Degenerate Landscapes

Abstract

The heights of energy barriers separating two (macro-)states are useful for estimating transition frequencies. In non-degenerate landscapes the decomposition of a landscape into basins surrounding local minima connected by saddle points is straightforward and yields a useful definition of macro-states. In this work we develop a rigorous concept of barrier trees for degenerate landscapes. We present a program that efficiently computes such barrier trees, and apply it to two well known examples of landscapes.