Related papers: H-theorem in quantum physics

We present a fluctuation theorem for quantum bipartite systems in which the subsystems exchange information with each other. Our information fluctuation theorem includes correlations by introducing a quantum mechanical mutual information…

Recently, there has been a considerable progress on the issue of the thermodynamic second law, which is known as the law of entropy increase or irreversibility. In particular, a novel symmetry known as the Gallavotti-Cohen symmetry is found…

For a small driven system coupled strongly to a heat bath, internal energy and exchanged heat are identified such that they obey the usual additive form of the first law. By identifying this exchanged heat with the entropy change of the…

We address a new setting where the second law is under question: thermalizations in a quantum superposition of causal orders, enacted by the so-called quantum switch. This superposition has been shown to be associated with an increase in…

In the present work we show that the second law of thermodynamics does not generally hold if the matter and gravitational fields are nonminimally coupled. We demonstrate this result by explicitly computing the evolution of the entropy of…

Recent research on the fundamentals of statistical mechanics has led to an interesting discovery [1-3]: With locally nonchaotic barriers, as Boltzmann's H-theorem is inapplicable, there exist nontrivial non-thermodynamic systems that can…

One of the core questions of quantum physics is how to reconcile the unitary evolution of quantum states, which is information-preserving and time-reversible, with evolution following the second law of thermodynamics, which, in general, is…

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…

The classical thermodynamic laws fail to capture the behavior of systems with energy Hamiltonian which is an explicit function of the temperature. Such Hamiltonian arises, for example, in modeling information processing systems, like…

We experimentally probe the interplay of the quantum switch with the laws of thermodynamics. The quantum switch places two channels in a superposition of orders and may be applied to thermalizing channels. Quantum-switching thermal channels…

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…

We improve on our version of the second law of thermodynamics as a deterministic theorem for quantum spin systems in two basic aspects. The first concerns the general statement of the second law: spontaneous changes in an adiabatically…

Physical laws for elementary particles can be described by the quantum dynamics equation given a Hamiltonian. The solution are probability amplitudes in Hilbert space that evolve over time. A probability density function over position and…

Fluctuations of thermodynamic observables, such as heat and work, contain relevant information on the underlying physical process. These fluctuations are however not taken into account in the traditional laws of thermodynamics. While the…

Fluctuation theorems have elevated the second law of thermodynamics to a statistical realm by establishing a connection between time-forward and time-reversal probabilities, providing invaluable insight into nonequilibrium dynamics. While…

We establish the general framework of quantum fluctuation theorems by finding the symmetry between the forward and backward transitions of any given quantum channel. The Petz recovery map is adopted as the reverse quantum channel, and the…

The essence of the second law of classical thermodynamics is the `entropy principle' which asserts the existence of an additive and extensive entropy function, S, that is defined for all equilibrium states of thermodynamic systems and whose…

As predicted by the second law of thermodynamics, the increase of entropy is irreversible in time. However, in quantum mechanics the evolution of quantum states is symmetrical about time-reversal, resulting a contradiction between…

Recent research on the thermodynamic arrow of time, at the microscopic scale, has questioned the universality of its direction. Theoretical studies showed that quantum correlations can be used to revert the natural heat flow (from the hot…

We investigate the connection between recent results in quantum thermodynamics and fluctuation relations by adopting a fully quantum mechanical description of thermodynamics. By including a work system whose energy is allowed to fluctuate,…