Relaxation in the subcritical pitchfork bifurcation: From critical to Gaussian scaling

We study the crossover in the relaxation dynamics from the situation at the bifurcation point of a subcritical pitchfork bifurcation to a situation well above the bifurcation point. An approximation for the stochastic paths is given that allows the calculation of the statistical properties of the escape times. These properties can be described by a generating function that exhibits dynamical scaling of critical nature at the bifurcation point and Gaussian dynamical scaling well above the bifurcation point.