Thermal relaxation asymmetry persists under inertial effects (opens in new tab)

arXiv:2603.18721v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We algebraically prove the asymmetry in thermal relaxation in phase space in the entire range from overdamped dynamics to underdamped dynamics. We show that for the same setup as for overdamped dynamics, even in the more general case of phase-space relaxation, i.e., underdamped dynamics, far-from-equilibrium heating is faster than cooling. Upon isolating the relevant relaxational contribution to the entropy production, we find that the asymmetr...