Tuning of barrier crossing time of a particle by time dependent magnetic field

We have studied the effect of time dependent magnetic field on the barrier crossing dynamics of a charged particle. An interplay of the magnetic field induced electric field and the applied field reveals several interesting features. For slowly oscillating field the barrier crossing rate increases remarkably particularly at large amplitude of the field. For appreciably large frequency a generically distinct phenomenon appears by virtue of parametric resonance manifested in multiple peaks appearing in the variation of the mean first passage time as a function of the amplitude. The parametric resonance is more robust against the variation of amplitude of the oscillating field compared to the case of variation of frequency. The barrier crossing time of a particle can be tuned para-metrically by appropriate choice of amplitude and frequency of the oscillating magnetic field. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.