English

Emergent thermodynamics in a quenched quantum many-body system

Statistical Mechanics 2013-07-24 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

We study the statistics of the work done, the fluctuation relations and the irreversible entropy production in a quantum many-body system subject to the sudden quench of a control parameter. By treating the quench as a thermodynamic transformation we show that the emergence of irreversibility in the nonequilibrium dynamics of closed many-body quantum systems can be accurately characterized. We demonstrate our ideas by considering a transverse quantum Ising model that is taken out of equilibrium by the instantaneous switching of the transverse field.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1207.4777,
  title  = {Emergent thermodynamics in a quenched quantum many-body system},
  author = {Ross Dorner and John Goold and Cecilia Cormick and Mauro Paternostro and Vlatko Vedral},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.4777},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

6 pages, 1 figure