Thermodynamical path integral and emergent symmetry
Abstract
We investigate a thermally isolated quantum many-body system with an external control represented by a step protocol of a parameter. The propagator at each step of the parameter change is described by thermodynamic quantities under some assumptions. For the time evolution of such systems, we formulate a path integral over the trajectories in the thermodynamic state space. In particular, for quasi-static operations, we derive an effective action of the thermodynamic entropy and its canonically conjugate variable. Then, the symmetry for the uniform translation of the conjugate variable emerges in the path integral. This leads to the entropy as a Noether invariant in quantum mechanics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1812.06375,
title = {Thermodynamical path integral and emergent symmetry},
author = {Shin-ichi Sasa and Sho Sugiura and Yuki Yokokura},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.06375},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
13 pages. This provides a new formulation for the result discussed in arXiv:1611.07268 which has been withdrawn