Mpemba effect in driven granular gases: Role of distance measures

Abstract

The Mpemba effect refers to the counterintuitive effect where a system which is initially further from the final steady state equilibrates faster than an identical system that is initially closer. The closeness to the final state is defined in terms of a distance measure. For driven granular systems, the Mpemba effect has been illustrated in terms of an ad hoc measure of mean kinetic energy as the distance function. In this paper, by studying four different distance measures based on the mean kinetic energies as well as velocity distribution, we show that the Mpemba effect depends on the definition of the measures.