Role of electron-electron interaction in the Mpemba effect in quantum dots

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron-electron interactions influence the Mpemba effect in quantum dots, revealing conditions for its occurrence and proposing experimental observation methods.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the Mpemba effect in quantum dots, emphasizing the role of electron-electron interactions and fermionic duality in relaxation dynamics.

Findings

Electron-electron interaction sign and magnitude affect the Mpemba effect.

Derived criteria for the effect using free energy and dot energy measures.

Proposed experimental schemes for observing the effect in quantum dots.

Abstract

The Mpemba effect has initially been noticed in macroscopic systems -- namely that hot water can freeze faster than cold water -- but recently its extension to open quantum systems has attracted significant attention. This phenomenon can be explained in the context of nonequilibrium thermodynamics of Markovian systems, relying on the amplitudes of different decay modes of the system dynamics. Here, we study the Mpemba effect in a single-level quantum dot coupled to a thermal bath, highlighting the role of the sign and magnitude of the electron-electron interaction in the occurrence of the Mpemba effect. We gain physical insights into the decay modes from a dissipative symmetry of this system called fermionic duality. Based on this analysis of the relaxation to equilibrium of the dot, we derive criteria for the occurrence of the Mpemba effect using two thermodynamically relevant measures of the distance to equilibrium, the nonequilibrium free energy and the dot energy. We furthermore compare this effect to a possible exponential speedup of the relaxation. Finally, we propose experimentally relevant schemes for the state preparation and explore different ways of observing the Mpemba effect in quantum dots in experiments.