Shortcuts of Freely Relaxing Systems Using Equilibrium Physical Observables González-Adalid Pemartín, Isidoro Mompó, Emanuel Lasanta Becerra, Antonio Martín-Mayor, Víctor Rodríguez Salas, Antonio Jesús Many systems, when initially placed far from equilibrium, exhibit surprising behavior in their attempt to equilibrate. Striking examples are the Mpemba effect and the cooling-heating asymmetry. These anomalous behaviors can be exploited to shorten the time needed to cool down (or heat up) a system. Though, a strategy to design these effects in mesoscopic systems is missing.We bring forward a description that allows us to formulate such strategies, and, along the way, makes natural these paradoxical behaviors. In particular, we study the evolution of macroscopic physical observables of systems freely relaxing under the influence of one or two instantaneous thermal quenches. The two crucial ingredients in our approach are timescale separation and a nonmonotonic temperature evolution of an important state function. We argue that both are generic features near a first-order transition. Our theory is exemplified with the one-dimensional Ising model in a magnetic field using analytic results and numerical experiments. 2024-07-30T11:35:25Z 2024-07-30T11:35:25Z 2024-03-15 journal article González-Adalid Pemartín, I. et. al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 117102. [https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.117102] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/93659 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.117102 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional American Physical Society