Stability measures in metastable states with Gaussian colored noise

We present a study of the escape time from a metastable state of an overdamped Brownian particle in thepresence of colored noise generated by Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. We analyze the role of the correlationtime on the enhancement of the mean first passage time through a potential barrier and on the behavior of themean growth rate coefficient as a function of the noise intensity. We observe the noise-enhanced stability effectfor all the initial unstable states used and for all values of the correlation time c investigated. We candistinguish two dynamical regimes characterized by weak and strong correlated noises, depending on the valueof c with respect to the relaxation time of the system.