Lévy walks are continuous time random walks with spatio-temporal coupling of jump lengths and waiting times, often used to model superdiffusive spreading processes such as animals searching for food, tracer motion in weakly chaotic systems, or even the dynamics in quantum systems such as cold atoms. In the simplest version Lévy walks move with a finite speed. Here, we present an extension of the Lévy walk scenario for the case when external force fields influence the motion. The resulting motion is a combination of the response to the deterministic force acting on the particle, changing its velocity according to the principle of total energy conservation, and random velocity reversals governed by the distribution of waiting times. For the fact that the motion stays conservative, that is, on a constant energy surface, our scenario is fundamentally different from thermal motion in the same external potentials. In particular, we present results for the velocity and position distributions for single well potentials of different steepness. The observed dynamics with its continuous velocity changes enriches the theory of Lévy walk processes and will be of use in a variety of systems, for which the particles are externally confined.

The escape from a potential well is an archetypal problem in the study of stochastic dynamical systems, representing real-world situations from chemical reactions to leaving an established home range in movement ecology. Concurrently, Lévy noise is a well-established approach to model systems characterized by statistical outliers and diverging higher order moments, ranging from gene expression control to the movement patterns of animals and humans. Here, we study the problem of Lévy noise-driven escape from an almost rectangular, arctangent potential well restricted by two absorbing boundaries, mostly under the action of the Cauchy noise. We unveil analogies of the observed transient dynamics to the general properties of stationary states of Lévy processes in single-well potentials. The first-escape dynamics is shown to exhibit exponential tails. We examine the dependence of the escape on the shape parameters, steepness, and height of the arctangent potential. Finally, we explore in detail the behavior of the probability densities of the first-escape time and the last-hitting point.

Stationary states for a particle moving in a single-well, steeper than parabolic, potential driven by Lévy noise can be bi-modal. Here, we explore in details conditions that are required in order to induce multimodal stationary states having more than two modal values. Phenomenological arguments determining necessary conditions for emergence of stationary states of higher multimodality are provided. Basing on these arguments, appropriate symmetric single-well potentials are constructed. Finally, using numerical methods it is verified that stationary states have anticipated multimodality.

A Lévy noise is an efficient description of out-of-equilibrium systems. The presence of Lévy flights results in a plenitude of noise-induced phenomena. Among others, Lévy flights can produce stationary states with more than one modal value in single-well potentials. Here, we explore stationary states in special double-well potentials demonstrating that a sufficiently high potential barrier separating potential wells can produce bimodal stationary states in each potential well. Furthermore, we explore how the decrease in the barrier height affects the multimodality of stationary states. Finally, we explore a role of the multimodality of stationary states on the noise induced escape over the static potential barrier.