Experimental and theoretical studies of anomalous thermal relaxation

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The Bechhoefer group at Simon Fraser University will initiate collaborations with the Raz group at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, with a goal of developing a better understanding of anomalous thermal relaxation in model condensed-matter systems. The prototype of such phenomena is the "Mpemba effect," where a hot system paradoxically cools off faster than a cool one. The proposed collaboration will join efforts from the Bechhoefer group, which has studied experimentally such phenomena in colloidal systems and the Raz group, which has led theoretical efforts to understand these phenomena in a wide variety of condensed-matter systems. While each group has been successful in previous individual investigations, they have not collaborated together, and we propose several significant and exciting new developments. The activities include studying (i) heating and cooling protocols that accelerate the final stage by using surprising non-monotonic variations in the first part of the protocol; (ii) subtle types of phase transitions that occur in the dynamics of relaxation processes (iii) joint efforts to demonstrate the Mpemba effect on the system of spins that form the D-Wave quantum annealer machine. These ideas have been proposed in a generic way by the Israeli group; the challenge now is to find conditions where they may be experimentally observed. The SFU group will extend the capabilities of its current experimental setup to be able to explore these new scenarios. As part of the initial collaboration efforts for this proposal, graduate-student members of each team will be exposed to new capabilities and experimental analyses that are not available at their home institutions. This research will benefit the academic community interested in the dynamics and thermodynamics of condensed-matter systems and related problems in nonequilibrium statistical physics. It may also lead to new applications (and thus new markets) for the technology developed by D-Wave, a leading company in the field of quantum computation. The Canadian company is based near the Simon Fraser University campus.