Specific heat in nonequilibrium systems

We propose a general framework of calculating the specific heat of the system in nonequilibrium, where the dynamics of the representative point can be separated into fast motion in a basin of energy landscape and the slow stochastic jump motion among basins. We apply this framework to gaseous hydrogen and obtain the observation time (t_obs) dependence of the specific heat. We find that the specific heat gives the quenched and the annealed one in the limit of t_obs→0 and t_obs→∞, respectively. We also investigate the waiting time and the observation time dependence of the specific heat and show that, for shorter waiting time, the observation time must be longer to obtain the same degree of annealing. This tendency is consistent with the observation that the glass transition temperature is higher for faster quenching.