English

Transient fluctuation theorem in closed quantum systems

Quantum Physics 2011-12-23 v1

Abstract

Our point of departure are the unitary dynamics of closed quantum systems as generated from the Schr\"odinger equation. We focus on a class of quantum models that typically exhibit roughly exponential relaxation of some observable within this framework. Furthermore, we focus on pure state evolutions. An entropy in accord with Jaynes principle is defined on the basis of the quantum expectation value of the above observable. It is demonstrated that the resulting deterministic entropy dynamics are in a sense in accord with a transient fluctuation theorem. Moreover, we demonstrate that the dynamics of the expectation value are describable in terms of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. These findings are demonstrated numerically and supported by analytical considerations based on quantum typicality.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.5292,
  title  = {Transient fluctuation theorem in closed quantum systems},
  author = {Christian Bartsch and Jochen Gemmer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.5292},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

5 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:55:45.612Z