Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 21: Stochastic Thermodynamics

DY 21.10: Talk

Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 12:15–12:30, ZEU/0114

Searching with Memory: Experiments on Stochastic Resetting in Complex Fluids — •Felix Ginot and Clemens Bechinger — University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany

Many natural and technological search processes, from molecular reactions to robotic exploration, benefit from occasionally resetting and trying again. This mechanism, known as stochastic resetting (SR), is well understood in simple memoryless environments, but real systems often exhibit complex relaxation dynamics that retain information about recent motion.

We experimentally investigate SR in a viscoelastic fluid by tracking a colloidal particle undergoing controlled resets. The fluid's delayed elastic response creates restoring forces that oppose each reset and reduce search efficiency. We show that these memory effects can be tuned: holding the particle at the trap center allows the fluid to relax and erase residual memory. With a target present, this control significantly lowers the mean passage time, with optimal performance at intermediate resetting rates. In this regime, memory induces temporal correlations that bunch target encounters and speed up repeated hits.

These results demonstrate that environmental memory can both hinder and enhance search, and they point to new strategies for optimizing transport in non-Markovian media.

Keywords: stochastic resetting; non-Markovian Physics; colloids; optical tweezers; viscoelasticity