Anomalous cooling and overcooling of active systems

Abstract

The phenomenon that a system at a hot temperature cools faster than at a warm temperature, referred to as the Mpemba effect, has been recently realized for trapped colloids. Here, we investigate the cooling and heating process of a self-propelling active colloid using numerical simulations and theoretical calculations with a model that can directly be tested in experiments. Upon cooling the particles' active motion induces a Mpemba effect. Transiently the system can even exhibit smaller temperatures than its final temperature, a surprising phenomenon which we refer to as activity-induced overcooling.