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After negative temperature is restated, we find that it will derive necessarily decrease of entropy. Negative temperature is based on the Kelvin scale and the condition dU>0 and dS<0. Conversely, there is also negative temperature for dU<0…
The second law of thermodynamics tells us which state transformations are so statistically unlikely that they are effectively forbidden. Its original formulation, due to Clausius, states that "Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer…
We consider a single harmonic oscillator coupled to a bath at zero temperature. As is well known, the oscillator then has a higher average energy than that given by its ground state. Here we show analytically that for a damping model with…
In a thermodynamical process, the dissipation or production of entropy can only be positive or zero according to the second law of thermodynamics. However the laws of thermodynamics are applicable to large systems in the thermodynamic…
The entropy of a thermally isolated system should not decrease after a quench or external driving. For a classical system following Hamiltonian dynamics, we show how this statement emerges for a large system in the sense that the extensive…
I use cosmology examples to illustrate that the second law of thermodynamics is not old and tired, but alive and kicking, continuing to stimulate interesting research on really big puzzles. The question "Why is the entropy so low?" (despite…
We investigate the validity of the generalized second law of thermodynamics, applying Barrow entropy for the horizon entropy. The former arises from the fact that the black-hole surface may be deformed due to quantum-gravitational effects,…
Bridging the second law of thermodynamics and microscopic reversible dynamics has been a longstanding problem in statistical physics. We here address this problem on the basis of quantum many-body physics, and discuss how the entropy…
A colloquial interpretation of entropy is that it is the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of a random experiment. Conditional entropy is then interpreted as the knowledge gained upon learning the outcome of one random experiment…
The first law of thermodynamics restates the law of conservation of energy. It partitions the change in energy of a system into two pieces, heat and work. While there is no ambiguity to define heat and work in classical thermodynamics,…
This thesis investigates the connection between quantum theory, thermodynamics and information theory. Theories with structure similar to that of quantum theory are considered, mathematically described by the framework of "Generalized…
If simple entropy in the Bekenstein-Hawking area law for a Schwarzschild black hole is replaced with 'negative' quantum conditional entropy, which quantifies quantum entanglement, of positive-energy particles of the black hole relative to…
Motivated by the notion that the mathematics of gravity can be reproduced from a statistical requirement of maximal entropy, we study the consequence of introducing an entropic source term in the Einstein-Hilbert action. For a spatially…
The free energy of a quantum oscillator in an arbitrary heat bath at a temperature T is given by a "remarkable formula" which involves only a single integral. This leads to a corresponding simple result for the entropy. The low temperature…
Second law of thermodynamics imposes that in any thermodynamic process the entropy production must be nonnegative. In continuum physics such a requirement is fulfilled by postulating the constitutive equations which represent the material…
It is proved here that, as a consequence of the unitary quantum evolution, the expectation value of a properly defined quantum entropy operator (as opposed to the non-evolving von Neumann entropy) can only increase during non adiabatic…
This article provides answers to the questions posed in the title. Contrary to the most common views, we show that neither the entropy, nor the Second Law may be used for either living systems, or to life phenomenon.
A corollary of the third law of thermodynamics is that the heat capacities of a system approach zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero Kevin. Many have attempted to take the corollary as the third law, but two counterexamples has…
The first law of thermodynamics imposes not just a constraint on the energy-content of systems in extreme quantum regimes, but also symmetry-constraints related to the thermodynamic processing of quantum coherence. We show that this…
The deep connection between entropy and information is discussed in terms of both classical and quantum physics. The mechanism of information transfer between systems via entanglement is explored in the context of decoherence theory. The…