Related papers: Quantum mechanical evolution towards thermal equil…
We study the nature of and approach to thermal equilibrium in isolated quantum systems. An individual isolated macroscopic quantum system in a pure or mixed state is regarded as being in thermal equilibrium if all macroscopic observables…
The relationship between thermodynamics and statistical physics is valid in the thermodynamic limit - when the number of particles becomes very large. Here, we study thermodynamics in the opposite regime - at both the nano scale, and when…
If we prepare an isolated, interacting quantum system in an eigenstate and perturb a local observable at an initial time, its expectation value will relax towards a thermal expectation value, even though the time evolution of the system is…
We study properties of isolated integrable quantum systems after a sudden quench starting from thermal states. We show that, even if the system is initially in thermal equilibrium at finite temperature, the diagonal entropy after a quench…
Within the framework of relativistic quantum field theory, a novel method is established which allows to distinguish non-equilibrium states admitting locally a thermodynamic interpretation. The basic idea is to compare these states with…
Controlling and measuring the temperature in different devices and platforms that operate in the quantum regime is, without any doubt, essential for any potential application. In this review, we report the most recent theoretical…
Small quantum systems non-weakly coupled to a bath become in the quantum regime surrounded by a cloud of photons or phonons, which modifies their thermodynamic behavior. Exactly solvable examples are the Brownian motion of a quantum…
The aim of this book chapter is to indicate how quantum phenomena are affecting the operation of microscopic thermal machines, such as engines and refrigerators. As converting heat to work is one of the fundamental concerns in…
We show that when the thermal wavelength is comparable to the spatial size of a system, thermodynamic observables like Pressure and Volume have quantum fluctuations that cannot be ignored. They are now represented by operators; conventional…
The concept of entropy is fundamental to thermalization, yet appears at odds with basic principles in quantum mechanics. Statistical mechanics relies on the maximization of entropy for a system at thermal equilibrium. However, an isolated…
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. Of particular practical relevance…
Quantum typicality refers to the phenomenon that the expectation values of any given observable are nearly identical for the overwhelming majority of all normalized vectors in a sufficiently high-dimensional Hilbert (sub-)space. As a…
We investigate the quantum Mpemba effect from the perspective of non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics by studying relaxation dynamics of quantum systems coupled to a Markovian heat bath, which are described by Davies maps. Starting from a…
It is possible to extract work from a quantum-mechanical system whose dynamics is governed by a time-dependent cyclic Hamiltonian. An energy bath is required to operate such a quantum engine in place of the heat bath used to run a…
This article traces the development of fluctuation theory and its deep connection to irreversibility, from equilibrium to near-equilibrium, and finally to far-from-equilibrium systems. Classical fluctuation theorems, which capture the…
Typicality arguments replace the postulated mixed state ensembles of statistical mechanics with pure states sampled uniformly at random, explaining why most microstates of large systems exhibit thermal behavior. This paradigm has been…
We propose a scheme for a quantum thermal machine made by atoms interacting with a single non-equilibrium electromagnetic field. The field is produced by a simple configuration of macroscopic objects held at thermal equilibrium at different…
We treat a quantum mechanical system with certain general properties which are expected to be common in macroscopic quantum systems. Starting from a PURE initial state (which may not describe an equilibrium) in which energy is mildly…
In the setup of isolated quantum systems, it is proved that the thermodynamic entropy and the diagonal entropy must increase extensively in any nontrivial quantum quench. The extensive increase of the thermodynamic entropy is shown for any…
We investigate the thermodynamics of integrable classical field theories under the effect of a random initial configuration, motivated by the nonequilibrium evolution of quantum field theories. The approach to thermal equilibrium is…