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The analysis of a birhythmic modified van der Pol type oscillator driven by periodic excitation and L\`evy noise shows the possible occurrence of coherence resonance and stochastic resonance. The frequency of the harmonic excitation in the neighborhood of one of the limit cycles influences the coherence of the dynamics on the time scale of intrawell oscillations. The autocorrelation function, the power spectral density and the signal-to-noise-ratio used in this analysis are shown to be maximized for an appropriate choice of the noise intensity. A proper adjustment of the L\`evy noise intensity enhances the output power spectrum of the system, that is, promotes stochastic resonance. Thus, the robustness of the resonance, that seems to occur also in the presence of nonstandard noise, is examined using standard measures. The initial selection of the attractor seems to have an influence on the coherence, while the skewness parameter of the L\`evy noise has not a notable impact on the resonant effect.

We propose to compute the effective activation energy, usually referred to a pseudopotential or quasipotential, of a birhythmic system -- a van der Pol like oscillator -- in the presence of correlated noise. It is demonstrated, with analytical techniques and numerical simulations, that the correlated noise can be taken into account and one can retrieve the low noise rate of the escapes. We thus conclude that a pseudopotential, or an effective activation energy, is a realistic description for the stability of birhythmic attractors also in the presence of correlated noise.

We investigate the effects of exponentially correlated noise on birhythmic van der Pol type oscillators. The analytical results are obtained applying the quasi-harmonic assumption to the Langevin equation to derive an approximated Fokker-Planck equation. This approach allows to analytically derive the probability distributions as well as the activation energies associated to switching between coexisting attractors. The stationary probability density function of the van der Pol oscillator reveals the influence of the correlation time on the dynamics. Stochastic bifurcations are discussed through a qualitative change of the stationary probability distribution, which indicates that noise intensity and correlation time can be treated as bifurcation parameters. Comparing the analytical and numerical results, we find good agreement both when the frequencies of the attractors are about equal or when they are markedly different.