Prados Montaño, AntonioPlata Ramos, Carlos Alberto2025-02-032025-02-032024-10-25Patrón Castro, A. (2025). Control and optimisation of irreversible processes in non-equilibrium systems. (Tesis Doctoral Inédita). Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla.https://hdl.handle.net/11441/168139This thesis is devoted to the study of physical systems embedded within the field of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Specifically, the state of the systems of interest constitutes a stochastic process that can be externally driven by a set of controllable parameters. On the one hand, for systems in contact with a thermal bath, we have studied the emergence of strong memory effects and glassy behaviour upon varying the bath temperature, and how these are related to the existence of non-equilibrium attractors governing the dynamics. On the other hand, for overdamped harmonic systems, we have studied the problem of minimising the connection time between arbitrary stationary---equilibrium or non-equilibrium---states, by suitably varying either the bath temperature or the stiffnesses of the potential.application/pdf210 p.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesisinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess