Calorimetric measurement of quantum work
Abstract
To define the work performed on a driven quantum system in a physically sound way has turned out to be a truly non-trivial task, except in some special cases of limited applicability. This topic has been in a focus of intense research recently in the attempts to generalize the classical fluctuation relations into the quantum regime. Here we propose and demonstrate that a calorimetric measurement gives both a theoretical and experimental tool to test the Jarzynski equality (JE) and other fluctuation relations in a quantum system, and to analyze the distribution of dissipation in them, based on the very principle of conservation of energy. We focus on an experimentally feasible two-level system, a superconducting Cooper pair box subject to Landau-Zener interband transitions. Because of the small heat capacity and weak relaxation to the phonon bath, the calorimetric measurement on the electron gas (resistor) turns out to be a very feasible experimental method.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1212.5808,
title = {Calorimetric measurement of quantum work},
author = {Jukka P. Pekola and Paolo Solinas and Alexander Shnirman and Dmitri V. Averin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.5808},
year = {2012}
}