Related papers: Stochastic independence as a resource in small-sca…

We provide an extension of a recent approach to study non-equilibrium thermodynamics [Phys. Rev. E 81, 051130 (2010), to be denoted by I in this work] to inhomogeneous systems by considering the latter to be composed of quasi-independent…

Microcanonical thermodynamics studies the operations that can be performed on systems with well-defined energy. So far, this approach has been applied to classical and quantum systems. Here we extend it to arbitrary physical theories,…

We assume that markovian dynamics on a finite graph enjoys a gauge symmetry under local scalings of the probability density, derive the transformation law for the transition rates and interpret the thermodynamic force as a gauge potential.…

By considering general Markov stochastic dynamics and its coarse-graining, we study the framework of stochastic thermodynamics for the original and reduced descriptions corresponding to different scales. We are especially concerned with the…

The selection of an equilibrium state by maximising the entropy of a system, subject to certain constraints, is often powerfully motivated as an exercise in logical inference, a procedure where conclusions are reached on the basis of…

We generalize stochastic thermodynamics to include information reservoirs. Such information reservoirs, which can be modeled as a sequence of bits, modify the second law. For example, work extraction from a system in contact with a single…

For a single enzyme or molecular motor operating in an aqueous solution of non-equilibrated solute concentrations, a thermodynamic description is developed on the level of an individual trajectory of transitions between states. The concept…

Photoisomerization, a photochemical process underlying many biological mechanisms, has been modeled recently within the quantum resource theory of thermodynamics. This approach has emerged as a promising tool for studying fundamental…

We establish an analytical criterion for dynamical thermalization within harmonic systems, applicable to both classical and quantum models. Specifically, we prove that thermalization of various observables, such as particle energies in…

Thermodynamics is a well developed tool to study systems in equilibrium but no such general framework is available for non-equilibrium processes. Only hope for a quantitative description is to fall back upon the equilibrium language as…

Recently, the theoretical framework of stochastic thermodynamics has been revealed to be useful for macroscopic systems. However, despite its conceptual and practical importance, the connection to hydrodynamics has yet to be explored. In…

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…

Recently, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics have been reconsidered for small systems. The discovery of the fluctuation relations has spurred theoretical and experimental studies on thermodynamics of systems with few degrees of freedom.…

Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…

The grand canonical ensemble lies at the core of quantum and classical statistical mechanics. A small system thermalizes to this ensemble while exchanging heat and particles with a bath. A quantum system may exchange quantities represented…

Active matter generates order or patterns through nonequilibrium dynamics. An open research challenge is to determine how efficiently a nonequilibrium self-organising system can convert consumed energy into macroscopic order. We study an…

The most complicated phenomena of equilibrium statistics, phase separations and transitions of various order and critical phenomena, can clearly and sharply be seen even for small systems in the topology of the curvature of the…

Macroscopic thermodynamics of equilibrium is constructed for systems obeying power-law canonical distributions. With this, the connection between macroscopic thermodynamics and microscopic statistical thermodynamics is generalized. This is…

A few decades after Hill's work on nano-thermodynamics, the development of a thermodynamic framework, to account consistently for the fluctuations of small systems due to their interactions with the surrounding environment, is still…

Stochastic thermodynamics and the associated fluctuation relations provide the means to extend the fundamental laws of thermodynamics to small scales and systems out of equilibrium. The fluctuating thermodynamic variables are usually…