| Title: |
Resource-Theoretical Unification of Mpemba Effects: Classical and Quantum |
| Authors: |
Summer, Alessandro; Moroder, Mattia; Bettmann, Laetitia P.; Turkeshi, Xhek; Marvian, Iman; Goold, John |
| Contributors: |
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Royal Society; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; National Science Foundation; Cluster of Excellence Matter and Light for Quantum Computing |
| Source: |
Physical Review X ; volume 16, issue 1 ; ISSN 2160-3308 |
| Publisher Information: |
American Physical Society (APS) |
| Publication Year: |
2026 |
| Description: |
The Mpemba effect originally referred to the observation that, under certain thermalizing dynamics, initially hotter samples can cool faster than colder ones. This effect has since been generalized to other anomalous relaxation behaviors even beyond classical domains, such as symmetry restoration in quantum systems. This work demonstrates that resource theories, widely employed in information theory, provide a unified organizing principle to frame Mpemba physics. We show how the conventional thermal Mpemba effect arises naturally from the resource theory of athermality, while its symmetry-restoring counterpart is fully captured by the resource theories of asymmetry. Leveraging the framework of modes of asymmetry, we demonstrate that the Mpemba effect due to symmetry restoration is governed by the initial overlap with the slowest symmetry-restoring mode, mirroring the role of the slowest Liouvillian eigenmode in thermal Mpemba dynamics. Through this resource-theoretical formalism, we uncover the connection between these seemingly disparate effects and show that the dynamics of thermalization naturally splits into a symmetry-respecting and a symmetry-breaking term. |
| Document Type: |
article in journal/newspaper |
| Language: |
English |
| DOI: |
10.1103/rbt4-psfd |
| DOI: |
10.1103/rbt4-psfd/fulltext |
| Availability: |
https://doi.org/10.1103/rbt4-psfd; https://link.aps.org/article/10.1103/rbt4-psfd; http://harvest.aps.org/v2/journals/articles/10.1103/rbt4-psfd/fulltext |
| Rights: |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.24185415 |
| Database: |
BASE |