Comparing two sources of physical aging: Temperature vs electric field

Physical aging is the process of a system evolving toward a new equilibrium, and thus the response to a change in external parameters such as temperature T, pressure p, or static electric field E. Using a static electric field has been shown to access physical aging above the glass transition temperature T_g, in the regime of milliseconds or faster, but the relation to its temperature jump counterpart has not been investigated to date. This work compares temperature and field induced physical aging in the limit of small perturbations for supercooled tributyl phosphate. It is found that both structural recovery dynamics are very similar, and that they match the collective reorientational dynamics as observed by dielectric relaxation. The results facilitate expanding the range of aging experiments to well above T_g, where a comparison with structural relaxation in equilibrium is straightforward, thus improving models of structural recovery and physical aging.