Entropy Best Poster Award at the XXVII Sitges Conference on Statistical Mechanics—Winner Announced

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Best Poster Award, sponsored by Entropy (ISSN: 1099-4300) for the XXVII Sitges Conference on Statistical Mechanics, held from 29 May to 2 June 2023.

“Anomalous relaxation phenomena in trapped colloids: Heating is faster than cooling”
by Miguel Ibáñez, Cai Dieball, Antonio Lasanta, Aljaž Godec and Raúl A. Rica

We have demonstrated, both theoretically and experimentally, that heating a mesoscopic system (consisting of a single colloidal particle trapped in a harmonic potential) is generally faster than cooling it. In our experimental study, we trapped a colloidal particle in an optical potential and investigated instantaneous thermalization processes. The theoretical aspect involved the development of a novel framework, primarily employing techniques from information geometry, enabling us to gain a deeper understanding of the behavior of these mesoscopic systems during heating and cooling. To achieve this, we analyzed the trajectory traced in the space of probability distributions, along with familiar measures such as velocity and length along the curve. This asymmetry becomes particularly pronounced when the system deviates significantly from equilibrium, where intuition seems to break down.