Non-Thermal Aging of Supercooled Liquids in Optical Cavities

Abstract

Aging is a hallmark of disordered materials such as glasses, plastics, and pharmaceuticals, where it often limits long-term stability and performance. In practice, aging is controlled through global parameters like temperature or pressure, which act uniformly on the entire system. Here we introduce a fundamentally different approach, using light confined in optical cavities as a precise and selective tool to guide aging dynamics. We show that a supercooled liquid coupled to an optical cavity undergoes non-thermal aging, where aging is induced by light without a thermal quench. Light selectively pumps fast vibrational modes while the bath temperature remains unchanged, reshaping the slow structural dynamics of the liquid. The cavity-coupled liquid thereby behaves as if it were structurally colder than its surroundings. Exploiting this effective structural cooling together with the timescale separation, we introduce cavity configurational feedback ($\mathrm{C^2F}$) cooling, which uses cavity coupling to reach progressively lower structural temperatures. Our results establish a connection between glass physics and strong light-matter interactions and open a new route toward optical control of aging, glass formation, and nonequilibrium materials dynamics.