English

Work statistics and thermal phase transitions

Quantum Physics 2022-09-08 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

Many previous studies have demonstrated that work statistics can exhibit certain singular behaviors in the quantum critical regimes of many-body systems at zero or very low temperatures. However, as the temperature increases, it is commonly believed that such singularities will vanish. Contrary to this common recognition, we report a nonanalytic behavior of the averaged work done, which occurs at finite temperature, in the Dicke model as well as the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model subjected to the sudden quenches of their work parameters. It is revealed that work statistics can be viewed as a signature of the thermal phase transition when the quenched parameters are tuned across the critical line that separates two different thermal phases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2206.04422,
  title  = {Work statistics and thermal phase transitions},
  author = {Ze-Zhou Zhang and Wei Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.04422},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

This paper has been accepted by Phys. Rev. E

R2 v1 2026-06-24T11:44:52.439Z