Related papers: Nonequilibrium work and entropy production by quan…
We study two non-equilibrium work fluctuation theorems, the Crooks' theorem and the Jarzynski equality, for a test system coupled to a spatially extended heat reservoir whose degrees of freedom are explicitly modeled. The sufficient…
We consider the Non-Equilibrium Steady State induced by two infinite quantum thermal reservoirs at different temperatures and derive an inequality giving the upper bound of the work extracted by cyclic operations. This upper bound tends to…
Quantum open systems evolve according to completely positive, trace preserving maps acting on the density operator, which can equivalently be unraveled in term of so-called quantum trajectories. These stochastic sequences of pure states…
In thermodynamics, entropy production and work quantify irreversibility and the consumption of useful energy, respectively, when a system is driven out of equilibrium. For quantum systems, these quantities can be identified at the…
Fluctuation theorems are one of the pillars of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Broadly speaking, they concern the statistical distribution of quantities such as heat, work or entropy production. Quantum experiments, however, usually can…
Research on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems has so far produced important statements on the thermodynamics of small systems undergoing quantum mechanical evolutions. Key examples are provided by the Crooks and Jarzynski…
The theory of phenomenological Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics is extended by includimg stochastic processes in order to account for recently derived thermodynamical relations such as the Jarzynski equality. Four phenomenological axioms are…
We consider open quantum systems weakly coupled to a heat reservoir and driven by arbitrary time-dependent parameters. We derive exact microscopic expressions for the nonequilibrium entropy production and entropy production rate, valid…
Heat flow between a large ``bath'' and a smaller system brings them progressively closer to thermal equilibrium while increasing their entropy. Deviations from this trend are fluctuations involving a small fraction of a statistical ensemble…
In quantum thermodynamics, the standard approach to estimate work fluctuations in unitary processes is based on two projective measurements, one performed at the beginning of the process and one at the end. The first measurement destroys…
We extend Jarzynski's work relation and the second law of thermodynamics to a heat conducting system which is operated by an external agent. These extensions contain a new non equilibrium contribution expressed as the violation of the…
A microscopic understanding of the thermodynamic entropy in quantum systems has been a mystery ever since the invention of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, this entropy is believed to be the logarithm of the volume of phase space…
Quantum measurement is ultimately a physical process, resulting from an interaction between the measured system and a measuring apparatus. Considering the physical process of measurement within a thermodynamic context naturally raises the…
A fluctuation theorem for the nonequilibrium entropy production in quantum phase space is derived, which enables the consistent thermodynamic description of arbitrary quantum systems, open and closed. The new treatment naturally generalizes…
Quantum annealing is a generic solver of classical optimization problems that makes full use of quantum fluctuations. We consider work statistics given by a repetition of quantum annealing processes by employing the Jarzynski equality…
Understanding thermodynamics far from equilibrium at the quantum scale remains a fundamental challenge, particularly in the presence of quantum coherence. Here we develop a first-principles framework for nonequilibrium quantum…
Accurately describing work extraction from a quantum system is a central objective for the extension of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems. The concepts of work and heat are surprisingly subtle when generalizations are made to…
The nonequilibrium fluctuation relation is a cornerstone of quantum thermodynamics. It is widely believed that the system-bath heat exchange obeys the famous Jarzynski-W\'{o}jcik fluctuation theorem. However, this theorem is established in…
An attempt toward the operational formulation of quantum thermodynamics is made by employing the recently proposed operations forming positive operator-valued measures for generating thermodynamic processes. The quantity of heat as well as…
Despite its enormous empirical success, the formalism of quantum theory still raises fundamental questions: why is nature described in terms of complex Hilbert spaces, and what modifications of it could we reasonably expect to find in some…