English

Heat bounds and the blowtorch theorem

Mathematical Physics 2015-05-07 v2 Statistical Mechanics math.MP

Abstract

We study driven systems with possible population inversion and we give optimal bounds on the relative occupations in terms of released heat. A precise meaning to Landauer's blowtorch theorem (1975) is obtained stating that nonequilibrium occupations are essentially modified by kinetic effects. Towards very low temperatures we apply a Freidlin-Wentzel type analysis for continuous time Markov jump processes. It leads to a definition of dominant states in terms of both heat and escape rates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1207.1122,
  title  = {Heat bounds and the blowtorch theorem},
  author = {Christian Maes and Karel Netocny},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.1122},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

11 pages; v2: minor changes, 1 reference added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:30:43.648Z