Experimental and theoretical studies of anomalous thermal relaxation

西蒙弗雷泽大学的Bechhoefer小组将与以色列魏茨曼科学研究所的Raz小组合作，目标是更好地理解模型凝聚态系统中的异常热弛豫。 这种现象的原型是“姆彭巴效应”，即热系统比冷系统冷却得更快。 拟议的合作将加入Bechhoefer小组的努力，该小组已经在胶体系统和Raz小组中进行了实验研究，该小组已经在理论上努力理解各种凝聚态系统中的这些现象。 虽然每个小组在以前的单独调查中都取得了成功，但他们并没有合作，我们提出了几个重要而令人兴奋的新发展。 这些活动包括研究（i）加热和冷却协议，通过在协议的第一部分使用令人惊讶的非单调变化来加速最后阶段;（ii）弛豫过程动态中发生的微妙类型的相变;（iii）共同努力证明Mpemba效应对形成D-Wave量子退火机的自旋系统的影响。 这些想法是以色列小组以一般方式提出的;现在的挑战是找到可以通过实验观察到这些想法的条件。 SFU小组将扩展其当前实验装置的能力，以便能够探索这些新的场景。 作为这项提案的初步合作努力的一部分，每个团队的研究生成员将接触到他们所在机构所没有的新能力和实验分析。 这项研究将有利于学术界感兴趣的凝聚态系统的动力学和热力学和非平衡统计物理的相关问题。 它还可能为量子计算领域的领先公司D-Wave开发的技术带来新的应用（从而开辟新市场）。 这家加拿大公司位于西蒙弗雷泽大学校园附近。

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.