Experiments performed in the last years demonstrated slow relaxations and aging in porous silicon. Even at room temperature, conductance relaxations are experimentally observed over timescales of hours. When a strong electric field is applied for a time t_w, the ensuing relaxation at time t also depends on t_w, in a non-trivial way.

In previous works we have shown how logarithmic relaxations and a particular form of aging emerge generically. A novel feature here is that an intrinsic timescale characterizes the system and affects the relaxations. We derive a single theoretical curve and show that all experimental data collapse onto it with this timescale as a (single) fitting parameter. The timescale is found to be of the order of thousands of seconds at room temperature.

The method should be applicable for many other systems manifesting memory and other glassy effects.