Assessing the quality of stochastic oscillations

We analyze the relationship between the macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of two-state systems, in particular the regime in which the microscopic one shows sustained ‘stochastic oscillations’ while the macroscopic tends to a fixed point. We propose a quantification of the oscillatory appearance of the fluctuating populations, and show that good stochastic oscillations are present if a parameter of the macroscopic model is small, and that...