Related papers: Adiabatic processes realized with a trapped Browni…
We review a series of experimental studies of the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium processes at the microscale. In particular, in these experiments we studied the fluctuations of the thermodynamic properties of a single optically-trapped…
Quantum thermodynamics aims at investigating both the emergence and the limits of the laws of thermodynamics from a quantum mechanical microscopic approach. In this scenario, thermodynamic processes with no heat exchange, namely, adiabatic…
Micro-to-nano scale thermal devices that operate under large thermal fluctuations, are an active field of research where instead the average values, the full distributions of thermodynamic quantities are important. Here we study a model of…
We investigate the statistics of the fluctuations of the energy transfer between an overdamped Brownian particle, whose motion is confined by a stationary harmonic potential, and a surrounding viscoelastic fluid at constant temperature. We…
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…
Energy is often partitioned into heat and work by two independent paths corresponding to the change in the eigenenergies or the probability distributions of a quantum system. The discrepancies of the heat and work for various quantum…
Obtaining adiabatic processes that connect equilibrium states in a given time represents a challenge for mesoscopic systems. In this paper, we explicitly show how to build these finite-time adiabatic processes for an overdamped Brownian…
We investigate a quasi-adiabatic thermal process for preparing finite-temperature ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. The process gradually transforms a thermal ensemble of a noninteracting system into that of an interacting system of…
A typical strategy of realizing an adiabatic change of a many-particle system is to vary parameters very slowly on a time scale $t_\text{r}$ much larger than intrinsic equilibration time scales. In the ideal case of adiabatic state…
Isothermal processes of a finitely extended, driven quantum system in contact with an infinite heat bath are studied from the point of view of quantum statistical mechanics. Notions like heat flux, work and entropy are defined for…
When an isolated system is brought in contact with a heat bath its final energy is random and follows the Gibbs distribution -- a cornerstone of statistical physics. The system's energy can also be changed by performing non-adiabatic work…
We obtain macroscopic adiabatic thermodynamic transformations by space-time scalings of a microscopic Hamiltonian dynamics subject to random collisions with the environment. The microscopic dynamics is given by a chain of oscillators…
Let a general quantum many-body system at a low temperature adiabatically cross through the vicinity of the system's quantum critical point. We show that the system's temperature is significantly suppressed due to both the entropy…
We consider a system of two Brownian particles (say A and B), coupled to each other via harmonic potential of stiffness constant $k$. Particle-A is connected to two heat baths of constant temperatures $T_1$ and $T_2$, and particle-B is…
Optimal performance of thermal machines is reached by suppressing friction. Friction in quantum thermodynamics results from fast driving schemes that generate nonadiabatic excitations. The far-from-equilibrium dynamics of quantum devices…
We present the exact adiabatic theory for the dynamics of the inhomogeneous density distribution of a classical fluid. Erroneous particle number fluctuations of dynamical density functional theory are absent, both for canonical and grand…
Quantum decoherence is of primary importance for relaxation to an equilibrium distribution and, accordingly, for equilibrium processes. We demonstrate how coherence breaking implies evolution to a microcanonical distribution…
We analyze underdamped Brownian motion in non-isothermal media with quadratic, linear, and piecewise-constant temperature profiles. Exact identities for entropy production and entropy extraction are derived, addressing whether a vanishing…
In the last ten years, a number of ``Conventional Fluctuation Theorems'' have been derived for systems with deterministic or stochastic dynamics, in a transient or in a non-equilibrium stationary state. These theorems gave explicit…
We discuss the application of the adiabatic perturbation theory to analyze the dynamics in various systems in the limit of slow parametric changes of the Hamiltonian. We first consider a two-level system and give an elementary derivation of…