南开大学潘磊团队近日研究了不平衡系统中的加速热化动力学。该研究于2025年10月14日发表在《物理评论A》杂志上。

课题组研究了嵌入在不相称势中并与马尔可夫热储相耦合的量子系统的热化动力学。由镀液引起的失相将系统推向无限温稳态，抹去所有初始信息，包括定位特征。研究组发现初始局域态比非局域态能更快地松弛到均匀稳态。

此外，低温初始状态比高温状态更快地热化到无限温度，这一现象让人想起Mpemba效应，即高温液体比低温液体冻结得更快。刘维廉谱中最慢的弛豫模式在局部或冷初始态的加速热化中起着至关重要的作用。该研究结果表明，无序结构和环境耗散的结合可能导致非平凡的热化行为，这既提出了Mpemba效应的概念框架，也提出了耗散无序系统中非平衡过程的理论认识。

附：英文原文

Title: Expedited thermalization dynamics in incommensurate systems

Author: Mingdi Xu, Zijun Wei, Xiang-Ping Jiang, Lei Pan

Issue&Volume: 2025/10/14

Abstract: We study the thermalization dynamics of a quantum system embedded in an incommensurate potential and coupled to a Markovian thermal reservoir. The dephasing induced by the bath drives the system toward an infinite-temperature steady state, erasing all initial information-including signatures of localization. We find that initially localized states can relax to the homogeneous steady state faster than delocalized states. Moreover, low-temperature initial states thermalize to infinite temperature more rapidly than high-temperature states—a phenomenon reminiscent of the Mpemba effect, in which hotter liquids freeze faster than colder ones. The slowest relaxation mode in the Liouvillian spectrum plays a critical role in the expedited thermalization for localized or cold initial states. Our results reveal that the combination of disordered structure and environmental dissipation may lead to nontrivial thermalization behavior, which advances both the conceptual framework of the Mpemba effect and the theoretical understanding of nonequilibrium processes in dissipative disordered systems.

DOI: 10.1103/9qkm-35y1

Source: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/9qkm-35y1