A cold system normally takes longer to warm up than a cool system. Yet recent theoretical studies have suggested that the reverse may sometimes be possible. Here, using a colloidal particle in a heat bath, we present experimental evidence for this inverse Mpemba effect. By carefully choosing the energy landscape, we can make the cold system heat up exponentially faster than the heating rate of cool systems. While similar behavior has been seen in systems that cool down—the Mpemba effect—we find that entropic effects generally make anomalous heating harder to observe than anomalous cooling.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118484119
A cold system normally takes longer to warm up than a cool system. Yet recent theoretical studies have suggested that the reverse may sometimes be possible. Here, using a colloidal particle in a heat bath, we present experimental evidence for this inverse Mpemba effect. By carefully choosing the energy landscape, we can make the cold system heat up exponentially faster than the heating rate of cool systems. While similar behavior has been seen in systems that cool down—the Mpemba effect—we find that entropic effects generally make anomalous heating harder to observe than anomalous cooling.