Beating the natural timescale for relaxation with optimal control
speaker: Antonio Prados (Universidad de Sevilla)abstract: Many physical systems irreversibly relax towards an equilibrium state or a non-equilibrium steady state--as first predicted by Boltzmann 150 years ago for a dilute granular gas. This irreversible evolution takes place over a certain timescale, which is characteristic of each physical system and measured by the so-called relaxation time. Is it possible to beat this natural timescale for relaxation by smartly engineering time-dependent protocols for the physical quantities controlling the time evolution of the system? We address this question in this talk, bringing to bear tools and results of optimal control theory to analyse two different physical situations: (i) a uniformly heated granular gas, described at the kinetic level by the inelastic Boltzmann equation, and (ii) a Brownian particle confined in a d-dimensional harmonic well, described at the mesoscopic level by the Fokker-Planck equation.
timetable:
Tue 29 Nov, 11:45 - 12:45, Sala Azzurra
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