Related papers: Nonequilibrium thermodynamics at the microscale: W…
Time-asymmetric behavior as embodied in the second law of thermodynamics is observed in {\it individual macroscopic} systems. It can be understood as arising naturally from time-symmetric microscopic laws when account is taken of a) the…
We demonstrate that irreversibility arises from the principle of microscopic reversibility and the presence of memory in the time evolution of a single copy of a system driven by a protocol. We introduce microscopic reversibility by using…
We consider a macroscopic system in contact with boundary reservoirs and/or under the action of an external field. We discuss the case in which the external forcing depends explicitly on time and drives the system from a nonequilibrium…
Recently, there has been a considerable progress on the issue of the thermodynamic second law, which is known as the law of entropy increase or irreversibility. In particular, a novel symmetry known as the Gallavotti-Cohen symmetry is found…
Based only on classical Hamiltonian dynamics, we prove the maximum work principle in a system where macroscopic dynamical degrees of freedom are intrinsically coupled to microscopic degrees of freedom. Unlike recent identities between…
Almost all processes -- highly correlated, weakly correlated, or correlated not at all---exhibit statistical fluctuations. Often physical laws, such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, address only typical realizations -- as highlighted by…
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…
In a macroscopic (quantum or classical) Hamiltonian system, we prove the second law of thermodynamics in the forms of the minimum work principle and the law of entropy increase, under the assumption that the initial state is described by a…
Noncommutativity of observables is a central feature of quantum physics. It plays a fundamental role in the formulation of the uncertainty principle for complementary variables and strongly affects the laws of thermodynamics for systems…
A general nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory is developed for time-dependent Langevin dynamics, starting from the common definition of nonequilibrium Gibbs entropy. It is shown that the notations appearing in the First and the Second Law…
We study how Thomson's formulation of the second law: no work is extracted from an equilibrium ensemble by a cyclic process, emerges in the quantum situation through the averaging over fluctuations of work. The latter concept is carefully…
The development of stochastic thermodynamics during the last decades prompted the discovery of novel nonequilibrium relations refining our understanding of the second law in small fluctuating systems and its connection with information…
There are only a very few known relations in statistical dynamics that are valid for systems driven arbitrarily far-from-equilibrium. One of these is the fluctuation theorem, which places conditions on the entropy production probability…
In this paper we give a pedagogical introduction to the ideas of quantum thermodynamics and work fluctuations, using only basic concepts from quantum and statistical mechanics. After reviewing the concept of work, as usually taught in…
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…
The observed general time-asymmetric behavior of macroscopic systems -- embodied in the second law of thermodynamics -- arises naturally from time-symmetric microscopic laws due to the great disparity between macro and micro-scales. More…
It exists a large class of systems for which the traditional notion of extensivity breaks down. From experimental examples we induce two general hypothesis concerning such systems. In the first the existence of an internal coordinate system…
In this report I discuss fluctuation theorems and transient violations of the second law of thermodynamics in small systems. Special emphasis is placed on free-energy recovery methods in the framework of non-equilibrium single-molecule…
The nonequilibrium work relation, or Jarzynski equality, establishes a statistical relationship between a series of nonequilibrium experiments on a system subjected to thermal fluctuations and a hypothetical experiment at thermodynamic…
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…