Related papers: Fundamental limitations for quantum and nano therm…
A sweep through a quantum phase transition by means of a time-dependent external parameter (e.g., pressure) entails non-equilibrium phenomena associated with a break-down of adiabaticity: At the critical point, the energy gap vanishes and…
It is argued that a typical many body energy eigenstate has a well defined thermodynamic entropy and that individual eigenstates possess thermodynamic characteristics analogous to those of generic isolated systems. We examine large systems…
Various quantum thermodynamic bounds are shown to stem from a single tighter and more general inequality, consequence of the operator concavity of the logarithmic function. Such an inequality, which we call the "thermodynamic reverse…
Quantum measurement of a system can change its mean energy, as well as entropy. A selective measurement (classical or quantum) can be used as a "Maxwell's demon" to power a single-temperature heat engine, by decreasing the entropy. Quantum…
An open question of fundamental importance in quantum thermodynamics is how to describe the statistics of work for initial state with quantum coherence. In this paper, work statistics is considered from a fully new perspective of…
The second law of thermodynamics tells us which state transformations are so statistically unlikely that they are effectively forbidden. Its original formulation, due to Clausius, states that "Heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer…
Modern technologies could soon make it possible to investigate the operation cycles of quantum heat engines by counting the photons that are emitted and absorbed by their working systems. Using the quantum jump approach to open-system…
Thermodynamics teaches that if a system initially off-equilibrium is coupled to work sources, the maximum work that it may yield is governed by its energy and entropy. For finite systems this bound is usually not reachable. The maximum…
Gibbs and Boltzmann definitions of temperature agree only in the macroscopic limit. The ambiguity in identifying the equilibrium temperature of a finite sized `small' system exchanging energy with a bath is usually understood as a…
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 thermodynamics of small quantum many-body systems strongly coupled to a heat bath at low temperatures with non-Markovian behavior are new challenges for quantum thermodynamics, as traditional thermodynamics is built on large systems…
A unified view on macroscopic thermodynamics and quantum transport is presented. Thermodynamic processes with an exchange of energy between two systems necessarily involve the flow of other balanceable quantities. These flows are first…
We investigate the limitations that emerge in thermodynamic tasks as a result of having local control only over the components of a thermal machine. These limitations are particularly relevant for devices composed of interacting many-body…
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…
Thermodynamic properties of confined systems depend on sizes of the confinement domain due to quantum nature of particles. Here we show that shape also enters as a control parameter on thermodynamic state functions. By considering specially…
Statistical thermodynamics is valuable as a conceptual structure that shapes our thinking about equilibrium thermodynamic states. A cloud of unresolved questions surrounding the foundations of the theory could lead an impartial observer to…
The fundamentals of a quantum heat engine are derived from first principles. The study is based on the equation of motion of a minimum set of operators which is then used to define the state of the system. The relation between the quantum…
What is the major difference between large and small systems? At small length-scales the dynamics is dominated by fluctuations, whereas at large scales fluctuations are irrelevant. Therefore, any thermodynamically consistent description of…
Quantum thermodynamics and quantum information are two frameworks for employing quantum mechanical systems for practical tasks, exploiting genuine quantum features to obtain advantages with respect to classical implementations. While…
We find necessary and sufficient conditions to determine the inter-convertibility of quantum systems under time-translation covariant evolution, and use it to solve several problems in quantum thermodynamics both in the single-shot and…