Related papers: Quantum thermodynamic processes: A control theory …
Control of open quantum systems is an essential ingredient to the realization of contemporary quantum science and technology. We demonstrate such control by employing a thermodynamically consistent framework, taking into account the fact…
From the thermodynamic equilibrium properties of a two-level system with variable energy-level gap $\Delta$, and a careful distinction between the Gibbs relation $dE = T dS + (E/\Delta) d\Delta$ and the energy balance equation $dE = \delta…
Thermal machines are physical systems designed to convert thermal energy into practical work through cyclic state transformations. A key component in such a machine is a clock-equipped control element that dictates which interaction…
Quantum thermodynamics is a research field that aims at fleshing out the ultimate limits of thermodynamic processes in the deep quantum regime. A complete picture of quantum thermodynamics allows for catalysts, i.e., systems facilitating…
Based on quantum thermodynamic processes, we make a quantum-mechanical (QM) extension of the typical heat engine cycles, such as the Carnot, Brayton, Otto, and Diesel cycles, etc. The temperature is not included in these QM engine cycles,…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
Underlying the classical thermodynamic principles are analogous microscopic laws, arising from the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics. These define quantum thermodynamic variables such as quantum work and heat and characterize the…
The emergence of irreversibility in physical processes, despite the fundamentally reversible nature of quantum mechanics, remains an open question in physics. This thesis explores the intricate relationship between quantum mechanics and…
Passivity is a fundamental concept in thermodynamics that demands a quantum system's energy cannot be lowered by any reversible, unitary process acting on the system. In the limit of many such systems, passivity leads in turn to the concept…
The proper definition of entropy is fundamental to the relationship between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. It also plays a major role in the recent debate about the validity of the concept of negative temperature. In this paper,…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. These lecture notes provide an…
Cooling of a quantum system is limited by the size of the control forces that are available (the "speed" of control). We consider the most general cooling process, albeit restricted to the regime in which the thermodynamics of the system is…
The laws of thermodynamics strongly restrict the performance of thermal machines. Standard thermodynamics, initially developed for uncorrelated macroscopic systems, does not hold for microscopic systems correlated with their environments.…
We present a consistent thermodynamic theory for the resonant level model in the wide band limit, whose level energy is driven slowly by an external force. The problem of defining 'system' and 'bath' in the strong coupling regime is…
In this paper we argue that one-way quantum computation can be seen as a form of phase transition with the available information about the solution of the computation being the order parameter. We draw a number of striking analogies between…
A new microcanonical equilibrium state is introduced for quantum systems with finite-dimensional state spaces. Equilibrium is characterised by a uniform distribution on a level surface of the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. The…
Tremendous research efforts have been invested in exploring and designing so-called shortcuts to adiabaticity. These are finite-time processes that produce the same final states that would result from infinitely slow driving. Most of these…
The quantum-mechanical and thermodynamic properties of a 3-level molecular cooling cycle are derived. An inadequacy of earlier models is rectified in accounting for the spontaneous emission and absorption associated with the coupling to the…
This article is the first in a series dealing with the thermodynamic properties of quantum Coulomb systems. In this first part, we consider a general real-valued function $E$ defined on all bounded open sets of $\R^3$. Our aim is to give…
We investigate the limitations that emerge in thermodynamic tasks as a result of having local control only over the components of a thermal machine. These limitations are particularly relevant for devices composed of interacting many-body…