Related papers: Irreversible work and inner friction in quantum th…
We take the perspective of open quantum systems and examine from their nonequilibrium dynamics the conditions when the physical quantities, their relations and the laws of thermodynamics become well defined and viable for quantum many body…
Quantum decoherence is seen as an undesired source of irreversibility that destroys quantum resources. Quantum coherences seem to be a property that vanishes at thermodynamic equilibrium. Away from equilibrium, quantum coherences challenge…
We propose a new approach concerning the introduction of time-irreversibility in statistical mechanics. It is based on a transition function defined in terms of path integral and verifying a time-irreversible equation. We show first how…
We introduce an ergotropy-based formulation of quantum thermodynamics, which provides a strong connection between average heat and von Neumann entropy. By adopting this formulation, we can reinterpret the infinitesimal average heat in terms…
Entropy production is a fundamental concept that plays a crucial role in the second law of thermodynamics and the measure of irreversibility. It imposes rigorous constraints on the kinds of transformations allowed in thermodynamic…
We report model calculations of the time-dependent internal energy and entropy for a single quasi-free massive quantum particle at a constant temperature. We show that the whole process started from a fully coherent quantum state to…
We report on a microscopic theory of quantum friction. Our approach investigates the interplay between the dispersive response and the relative center-of-mass motion of two ground-state atoms. This coupling yields a quantum force, which can…
The physical foundations of a variety of emerging technologies --- ranging from the applications of quantum entanglement in quantum information to the applications of nonequilibrium bulk and interface phenomena in microfluidics, biology,…
The emerging field of quantum thermodynamics is contributing important results and insights into archetypal many-body problems, including quantum phase transitions. Still, the question whether out-of-equilibrium quantities, such as…
Regarded as one of the most fundamental concepts of classical mechanics and thermodynamics, work has received well-grounded definitions within the quantum framework since the 1970s, having being successfully applied to many contexts. Recent…
We reveal a correspondence between temperature and integrability-breaking in classical and quantum many-body systems through the lens of geometry and adiabatic transformations. Decreasing the temperature, obtained in a standard way through…
Adiabatic (or reversible) processes are the key concept unifying our understanding of thermodynamics and dynamical systems. Reversibility in the thermodynamic sense is understood as entropy-preserving processes, such as in the idealized…
The universal quantum work relation connects a functional of an arbitrary observable averaged over the forward process to the free energy difference and another functional averaged over the time-reversed process. Here, we ask the question…
Generic far-away-from-equilibrium many-body dynamics involve entropy production, and hence are thermodynamically irreversible. Near quantum critical points, an emergent conformal symmetry can impose strong constraints on entropy production…
The wide-spread opinion is that original quantum mechanics is a reversible theory, but this statement is only true for undecomposed systems, that are those systems which sub-systems are out of consideration. Taking sub-systems into account,…
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…
We study the physics of quantum phase transitions from the perspective of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. For first order quantum phase transitions, we find that the average work done per quench in crossing the critical point is…
After a brief historical perspective, we introduce the key notions of work and heat for quantum systems, to then apply them to quantum engines operating on quantum Otto and Carnot cycles. The irreversible and dissipative character of the…
We study self-organisation of collective motion as a thermodynamic phenomenon, in the context of the first law of thermodynamics. It is expected that the coherent ordered motion typically self-organises in the presence of changes in the…
Thermodynamics is traditionally concerned with systems comprised of a large number of particles. Here we present a framework for extending thermodynamics to individual quantum systems, including explicitly a thermal bath and work-storage…