Second time scale of the metastability of reversible inclusion processes

We investigate the second time scale of the metastable behavior of the reversible inclusion process in an extension of the study by Bianchi et al. (Electron J Probab 22:1–34, 2017), which presented the first time scale of the same model and conjectured the scheme of multiple time scales. We show that N/dN2 is indeed the correct second time scale for the most general class of reversible inclusion processes, and thus prove the first conjecture of the foresaid study. Here, N denotes the number of particles, and d_N denotes the small scale of randomness of the system. The main obstacles of this research arise in calculating the sharp asymptotics for the capacities, and in the fact that the methods employed in the former study are not directly applicable due to the complex geometry of particle configurations. To overcome these problems, we first thoroughly examine the landscape of the transition rates to obtain a proper test function of the equilibrium potential, which provides the upper bound for the capacities. Then, we modify the induced test flow and precisely estimate the equilibrium potential near the metastable valleys to obtain the correct lower bound for the capacities.