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Engineered swift equilibration of a Brownian particle

Nature Physics volume 12, pages 843–846 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

A fundamental and intrinsic property of any device or natural system is its relaxation time τrelax, which is the time it takes to return to equilibrium after the sudden change of a control parameter1. Reducing τrelax is frequently necessary, and is often obtained by a complex feedback process. To overcome the limitations of such an approach, alternative methods based on suitable driving protocols have been recently demonstrated2,3, for isolated quantum and classical systems4,5,6,7,8,9. Their extension to open systems in contact with a thermostat is a stumbling block for applications. Here, we design a protocol, named Engineered Swift Equilibration (ESE), that shortcuts time-consuming relaxations, and we apply it to a Brownian particle trapped in an optical potential whose properties can be controlled in time. We implement the process experimentally, showing that it allows the system to reach equilibrium 100 times faster than the natural equilibration rate. We also estimate the increase of the dissipated energy needed to get such a time reduction. The method paves the way for applications in micro- and nano-devices, where the reduction of operation time represents as substantial a challenge as miniaturization10.

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Figure 1: Sketch of the process.
Figure 2: Dynamics of the system along the STEP and ESE protocol.
Figure 3: Energetics of the ESE protocol.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank B. Derrida for useful discussions. I.A.M., A.P. and S.C. acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council Grant OUTEFLUCOP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Physique, CNRS UMR5672 Université de Lyon, École Normale Supérieure, 46 Allée d’Italie, 69364 Lyon, France

    Ignacio A. Martínez, Artyom Petrosyan & Sergio Ciliberto

  2. Laboratoire Collisions Agrégats Réactivité, CNRS UMR5589, Université de Toulouse, 31062 Toulouse, France

    David Guéry-Odelin

  3. LPTMS, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, 91405 Orsay, France

    Emmanuel Trizac

Authors
  1. Ignacio A. Martínez
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  2. Artyom Petrosyan
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  3. David Guéry-Odelin
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  4. Emmanuel Trizac
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  5. Sergio Ciliberto
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All authors contributed substantially to this work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sergio Ciliberto.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Martínez, I., Petrosyan, A., Guéry-Odelin, D. et al. Engineered swift equilibration of a Brownian particle. Nature Phys 12, 843–846 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3758

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