Related papers: Second law and Landauer principle far from equilib…
Using flow equations, equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics of a two-level system are investigated, which couples via non-commuting components to two independent oscillator baths. In equilibrium the two-level energy splitting is…
The Casimir force between arbitrary objects in equilibrium is related to scattering from individual bodies. We extend this approach to heat transfer and Casimir forces in non-equilibrium cases where each body, and the environment, is at a…
The problem of formulating thermodynamics in a relativistic scenario remains unresolved, although many proposals exist in the literature. The challenge arises due to the intrinsic dynamic structure of spacetime as established by the general…
It is often claimed, that from a quantum system of d levels, and entropy S and heat bath of temperature T one can draw kT(ln d -S) amount of work. However, the usual arguments based on Szilard engine are not fully rigorous. Here we prove…
The second law of thermodynamics is a fundamental law of Nature. It is almost universally associated with the Clausius inequality that lower bounds a change in entropy by the ratio of supplied heat and temperature. However, this result…
It has recently been shown that the Helmholtz free energy difference between two equilibrium configurations of a system may be obtained from an ensemble of finite-time (nonequilibrium) measurements of the work performed in switching an…
The laws of thermodynamics, despite their wide range of applicability, are known to break down when systems are correlated with their environments. Here, we generalize thermodynamics to physical scenarios which allow presence of…
A fluctuation relation for the heat exchange of an open quantum system under a thermalizing Markovian dynamics is derived. We show that the probability of that the system absorbs an amount of heat from its bath, at a given time interval,…
Given a thermodynamic process which carries a system from one equilibrium state to another, we construct a quantity whose average, over an ensemble of microscopic realizations of the process, depends only on these end states, even if at…
We investigate the link between information and thermodynamics embodied by Landauer's principle in the open dynamics of a multipartite quantum system. Such irreversible dynamics is described in terms of a collisional model with a finite…
Onsager's relations allow one to express the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the underlying associated currents. These relations, however, are usually valid only close to equilibrium. Using a quantum phase space formulation of the…
We derive a Thermodynamic Uncertainty Relation bounding the mean squared displacement of a Gaussian process with memory, driven out of equilibrium by unbalanced thermal baths and/or by external forces. Our bound is tighter with respect to…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…
According to the Landauer principle, any logically irreversible process accompanies entropy production, which results in heat dissipation in the environment. Erasing of information, one of the primary logically irreversible processes, has a…
The meaning of temperature in nonequilibrium thermodynamics is considered by using a forced harmonic oscillator in a heat bath, where we have two effective temperatures for the position and the momentum, respectively. We invent a concrete…
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…
We study thermal radiation outside equilibrium. The situation considered consists of two bodies emitting photons at two different temperatures. We show that the system evolves to a stationary state characterized by an energy current which…
Recent years have witnessed major advances in our understanding of nonequilibrium processes. The Jarzynski equality, for example, provides a link between equilibrium free energy differences and finite-time, nonequilibrium dynamics. We…
We prove the second law of thermodynamics and the nonequilibirum fluctuation theorem for pure quantum states.The entire system obeys reversible unitary dynamics, where the initial state of the heat bath is not the canonical distribution but…
In the real world, one almost never knows the parameters of a thermodynamic process to infinite precision. Reflecting this, here we investigate how to extend stochastic thermodynamics to systems with uncertain parameters, including…