Related papers: Second laws under control restrictions
According to classical Boltzmannian thermodynamics, the efficiency of a cyclic machine is strictly lower than one. Such a result is a straightforward consequence of the second principle of thermodynamics. Recent advances in the study of the…
Optimal (reversible) processes in thermodynamics can be modelled as step-by-step processes, where the system is successively thermalized with respect to different Hamiltonians by an external thermal bath. However, in practice interactions…
The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermally isolated system entropy never decreases. Most physical processes we observe in nature involve variations of macroscopic quantities over spatial and temporal scales much larger…
Master equation could be applied to model various kinds of biochemical systems. A general theory for its time-dependent nonequilibrium thermodynamics is rigorously derived. We not only introduce a concept of general internal energy, but…
The possibility of stating the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the increasing behaviour of a physical property establishes a connection between that branch of physics and the theory of algebraic inequalities. We use this connection…
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open…
People are well aware that, inherently, certain small-scale nonchaotic particle movements are not governed by thermodynamics. Usually, such phenomena are studied by kinetic theory and their energy properties are considered "trivial". In…
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,…
Classically, the power generated by an ideal thermal machine cannot be larger than the Carnot limit. This profound result is rooted in the second law of thermodynamics. A hot question is whether this bound is still valid for microengines…
It exists a large class of systems for which the traditional notion of extensivity breaks down. From experimental examples we induce two general hypothesis concerning such systems. In the first the existence of an internal coordinate system…
We consider continuously monitored quantum systems and introduce definitions of work and heat along individual quantum trajectories that are valid for coherent superpositions of energy eigenstates. We use these quantities to extend the…
In this paper we study a class of physical systems that combine a finite number of mechanical and thermodynamic observables. We call them finite dimensional thermo-mechanical systems. We introduce these systems by means of simple examples.…
A classical and quantum mechanical generalized second law of thermodynamics in cosmology implies constraints on the effective equation of state of the universe in the form of energy conditions, obeyed by many known cosmological solutions,…
We consider a single harmonic oscillator coupled to a bath at zero temperature. As is well known, the oscillator then has a higher average energy than that given by its ground state. Here we show analytically that for a damping model with…
The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy production cannot be negative. Recent developments concerning uncertainty relations in stochastic thermodynamics, such as thermodynamic uncertainty relations and speed limits, have…
The stationary state of a quantum particle strongly coupled to a quantum thermal bath is known to be non-gibbsian, due to entanglement with the bath. For harmonic potentials, where the system can be described by effective temperatures,…
Entanglement is central both to the foundations of quantum theory and, as a novel resource, to quantum information science. The theory of entanglement establishes basic laws, such as the non-increase of entanglement under local operations,…
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…
If the second law of thermodynamics forbids a transition from one state to another, then it is still possible to make the transition happen by using a sufficient amount of work. But if we do not have access to this amount of work, can the…
Work extraction from a heat engine in a cycle by a quantum mechanical device (quantum "piston") is analyzed. The standard definition of work fails in the quantum domain. The correct extractable work and its efficiency bound are shown to…