Variational Formulation and Capacity Estimates for Non-Self-Adjoint Fokker-Planck Operators in Divergence Form

Abstract: We introduce a variational formulation for a general class of possibly degenerate, non-self-adjoint Fokker-Planck operators in divergence form, motivated by the work of Albritton et al. (2024), and prove that it is suitable for defining the variational capacity. Using this framework, we establish rough estimates for the equilibrium potential in the elliptic case, providing a novel approach compared to previous methods. Finally, we derive the Eyring-Kramers formula for non-self-adjoint elliptic Fokker-Planck operators in divergence form, extending the results of Landim et al. (2019) and Lee & Seo (2022).