You are cordially invited to the IPB COLLOQUIUM which will be held on Wednesday, 25 December 2024 at 13:00 in the “Zvonko Marić” lecture hall of the Institute of Physics Belgrade. The talk entitled

Speed ups in nonequilibrium thermal relaxation: Mpemba and related effects

will be given by Prof. Dr. Marija Vucelja (Department of Physics, University of Virginia, USA). The abstract of the talk:

Most of our intuition about the behavior of physical systems is shaped by observations at or near thermal equilibrium. However, even a basic phenomenon like a thermal quench can lead to states far from any thermal equilibrium, where counterintuitive, anomalous effects can occur. A prime example of anomalous thermal relaxation is the Mpemba effect, in which a system prepared at a hot temperature cools down to the temperature of the cold environment faster than an identical system prepared at a warm temperature. In this talk we will review the phenomenology of the Mpemba effect and related anomalous relaxation effects, which all share a nonmonotonic dependence of relaxation time versus initial “distance” from the final state or from the phase transition. The final state can be a thermal equilibrium or a nonequilibrium steady state. We will introduce general concepts and provide a modern definition of the Mpemba effect, focusing on the theoretical frameworks of stochastic thermodynamics, Markovian dynamics, and phase transitions. Finally, we will discuss the most recent experimental and numerical developments that followed these theoretical advances. These developments paved the way for predicting and observing novel phenomena, such as the inverse Mpemba effect. We will also discuss the broader relevance of the Mpemba effect, including its relation with phase transitions and its experimental implications.