English

Thermodynamics of Quantum Information Flows

Statistical Mechanics 2019-04-18 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

We report two results complementing the second law of thermodynamics for Markovian open quantum systems coupled to multiple reservoirs with different temperatures and chemical potentials. First, we derive a nonequilibrium free energy inequality providing an upper bound for a maximum power output, which for systems with inhomogeneous temperature is not equivalent to the Clausius inequality. Secondly, we derive local Clausius and free energy inequalities for subsystems of a composite system. These inequalities differ from the total system one by the presence of an information-related contribution and build the ground for thermodynamics of quantum information processing. Our theory is used to study an autonomous Maxwell demon.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.01093,
  title  = {Thermodynamics of Quantum Information Flows},
  author = {Krzysztof Ptaszynski and Massimiliano Esposito},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.01093},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures, with the Supplementary Material

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:03:05.938Z