In and out of equilibrium
Résumé
Albert Einstein's work on brownian motion showed how thermal equilibrium could be brought about by work exchanged through thermal fluctuations and viscous dissipation. Glasses are out-of-equilibrium systems in which this exchange happens at widely different timescales simultaneously. Theory then suggests the fascinating possibility that such behaviour may lead to a more general form of thermalization, in which the effective temperature shared by all components differs at each timescale.