Related papers: Does the second law of thermodynamics really hold …
It is established that black holes have entropy and behave as thermodynamical systems. Associating entropy to gravitational fields has not remained limited to black holes, necessitating the notion of the second law of thermodynamics in…
We analyze underdamped Brownian motion in non-isothermal media with quadratic, linear, and piecewise-constant temperature profiles. Exact identities for entropy production and entropy extraction are derived, addressing whether a vanishing…
The second law of nonequilibrium thermodynamics within the open system paradigm (a small system coupled to one or multiple baths) is derived. This is done by showing positivity of entropy production for arbitrary Hamiltonian dynamics for a…
We compute the entropy production engendered in the environment from a single Brownian particle which moves in a mean flow, and show that it corresponds in expectation to classical near-equilibrium entropy production in the surrounding…
Thermodynamics at the nanoscale is known to differ significantly from its familiar macroscopic counterpart: the possibility of state transitions is not determined by free energy alone, but by an infinite family of free-energy-like…
Microcanonical Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics on one hand to closed finite and even small systems and on the other to the largest,self-gravitating ones. However, one has to reconsider the fundamental…
We review on a recently proposed quantum exception to the second law of thermodynamics. We emphasize that $^4$He superflows, like any other forms of flows, shall carry entropy or heat in a thermal environment. Following that, one can use a…
The limits of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which reigns undisputed in the macroscopic world, are investigated at the mesoscopic level, corresponding to spatial dimensions of a few microns. An extremely simple isolated system, modeled…
The Second Law of Thermodynamics asserts that the physical entropy of an adiabatic system is an increasing function in time. In this paper we will study a more stringent version of this law, according to which the entropy should not only…
We establish a refined version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for Langevin stochastic processes describing mesoscopic systems driven by conservative or non-conservative forces and interacting with thermal noise. The refinement is based…
We present the stochastic thermodynamics analysis of an open quantum system weakly coupled to multiple reservoirs and driven by a rapidly oscillating external field. The analysis is built on a modified stochastic master equation in the…
In textbooks on statistical mechanics, one finds often arguments based on classical mechanics, phase space and ergodicity in order to justify the second law of thermodynamics. However, the basic equations of motion of classical mechanics…
Surprisingly the looking natural random walk leading to Brownian motion occurs to be often biased in a very subtle way: usually refers to only approximate fulfillment of thermodynamical principles like maximizing uncertainty. Recently, a…
We derive the quantum thermodynamics of quantum Brownian motion from the exact solution of its reduced density matrix. We start from the total equilibrium thermal state between the Brownian particle and its reservoir, and solve analytically…
Emergence, optimization and stability of a motor-like motion in a fluctuating environment are analyzed. The emergence of motion is shown to be a general phenomenon. A motor converges to the state with the minimum of effective temperature…
Statistical properties of Brownian motion that arise by analyzing, separately, trajectories over which the system energy increases (upside) or decreases (downside) with respect to a threshold energy level, are derived. This selective…
We analyze the temperature relaxation phenomena of systems in contact with a thermal reservoir that undergo a non-Markovian diffusion process. From a generalized Langevin equation, we show that the temperature is governed by a law of…
The paper is devoted to the problem of the determination of regular and thermal forces acting on microscopic and smaller objects in fluids. One of the methods how regular forces are determined is the measurement of the drift velocity of…
We analyze the time-resolved energy transport and the entropy production in ac-driven quantum coherent electron systems coupled to multiple reservoirs at finite temperature. At slow driving we formulate the first and second laws of…
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system is non-decreasing. Discussing the Second Law in the quantum world poses new challenges and provides new opportunities, involving fundamental…