Related papers: Microscopic Work Distribution of Small System in Q…
We generalize the second law of thermodynamics in its maximum work formulation for a nonequilibrium initial distribution. It is found that in an isothermal process, the Boltzmann relative entropy (H-function) is not just a Lyapunov function…
Close to equilibrium, the exchange of particles and heat between macroscopic systems at different temperatures and different chemical potentials is known to be governed by a matrix of transport coefficients which is positive and symmetric.…
A new thermodynamic inequality is derived which leads to the maximum work that can be extracted from multi-heat baths with the assistance of discrete quantum feedback control. The maximum work is determined by the free-energy difference and…
The classical Jarzynski equality establishes an exact relation between the stochastic work performed on a system driven out of thermal equilibrium and the free energy difference in a corresponding quasi-static process. This fluctuation…
Deriving the laws of thermodynamics from a microscopic picture is a central quest of statistical mechanics. This tutorial focuses on the derivation of the first and second law for closed and open quantum systems far from equilibrium, where…
Fluctuation theorems are fundamental extensions of the second law of thermodynamics for small systems. Their general validity arbitrarily far from equilibrium makes them invaluable in nonequilibrium physics. So far, experimental studies of…
The fluctuation-dissipation theorem is a fundamental result in statistical physics that establishes a connection between the response of a system subject to a perturbation and the fluctuations associated with observables in equilibrium.…
Previously derived expressions for the characteristic function of work performed on a quantum system by a classical external force are generalized to arbitrary initial states of the considered system and to Hamiltonians with degenerate…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
We discuss the thermodynamics of closed quantum systems driven out of equilibrium by a change in a control parameter and undergoing a unitary process. We compare the work actually done on the system with the one that would be performed…
Fluctuations of thermodynamic quantities become non-negligible and play an important role when the system size is small. We develop finite-time thermodynamics of fluctuations in microscopic heat engines whose environmental temperature and…
The quantum thermodynamic behavior of small systems is investigated in presence of finite quantum dissipation. We consider the archetype cases of a damped harmonic oscillator and a free quantum Brownian particle. A main finding is that…
We investigate the probability distribution of the quantum fluctuations of thermodynamic functions of finite, ballistic, phase-coherent Fermi gases. Depending on the chaotic or integrable nature of the underlying classical dynamics, on the…
We consider damped stochastic systems in a controlled (time-varying) quadratic potential and study their transition between specified Gibbs-equilibria states in finite time. By the second law of thermodynamics, the minimum amount of work…
The second law of thermodynamics, formulated as an ultimate bound on the maximum extractable work, has been rigorously derived in multiple scenarios. However, the unavoidable limitations that emerge due to the lack of control on small…
In Newtonian mechanics, any closed-system dynamics of a composite system in a microstate will leave all its individual subsystems in distinct microstates, however this fails dramatically in quantum mechanics due to the existence of quantum…
An open question of fundamental importance in thermodynamics is how to describe the fluctuations of work for quantum coherent processes. In the standard approach, based on a projective energy measurement both at the beginning and at the end…
We derive the fluctuation theorem for quantum-state statistics that can be obtained when we initially measure the total energy of a quantum system at thermal equilibrium, let the system evolve unitarily, and record the quantum-state data…
In recent years we have witnessed a concentrated effort to make sense of thermodynamics for small-scale systems. One of the main difficulties is to capture a suitable notion of work that models realistically the purpose of quantum machines,…
Considering a general microscopic model for a quantum measuring apparatus comprising a quantum probe coupled to a thermal bath, we analyze the energetic resources necessary for the realization of a quantum measurement, which includes the…