title: Everlasting initial memory threshold for rare events in equilibration processes.
abstract: Conventional wisdom indicates that initial memory should decay away exponentially in time for general (noncritial) equilibration processes. In particular, time-integrated quantities such as heat are presumed to lose initial memory in a sufficiently long-time limit. However, we show that the large deviation function of time-integrated quantities may exhibit initial memory effect even in the infinite-time limit, if the system is initially prepared sufficiently far away from equilibrium. For a Brownian particle dynamics, as an example, we found a sharp finite threshold rigorously, beyond which the corresponding large deviation function contains everlasting initial memory. The physical origin for this phenomenon is explored with an intuitive argument and also from a toy model analysis. Our results can be applied to general nonequilibrium relaxation processes reaching (non)equilibrium steady states.
authors.affiliation: School of Physics, Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul 130-722, Korea.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Chulan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kwon
authors.forename: Hyunggyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Park
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004735:Energy Transfer; D006358:Hot Temperature; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013816:Thermodynamics