Related papers: Perspective: Quantum Thermodynamics
Why is thermalisation a universal phenomenon? How does a quantum system reach thermodynamical equilibrium? These questions are not new, dating even from the very birth of quantum theory and have been the subject of a renewed interest over…
The last two decades has seen quantum thermodynamics become a well established field of research in its own right. In that time, it has demonstrated a remarkably broad applicability, ranging from providing foundational advances in the…
Understanding thermalisation in quantum many-body systems is among the most enduring problems in modern physics. A particularly interesting question concerns the role played by quantum mechanics in this process, i.e. whether thermalisation…
Quantum thermodynamics is a powerful theoretical tool for assessing the suitability of quantum materials as platforms for novel technologies. In particular, the modeling of quantum cycles allows us to investigate the heat changes and work…
A fluctuation theorem for the nonequilibrium entropy production in quantum phase space is derived, which enables the consistent thermodynamic description of arbitrary quantum systems, open and closed. The new treatment naturally generalizes…
The aim of this book chapter is to indicate how quantum phenomena are affecting the operation of microscopic thermal machines, such as engines and refrigerators. As converting heat to work is one of the fundamental concerns in…
We establish quantum thermodynamics for open quantum systems weakly coupled to their reservoirs when the system exhibits degeneracies. The first and second law of thermodynamics are derived, as well as a finite-time fluctuation theorem for…
Quantum thermodynamics aims to explore quantum features to enhance energy conversion beyond classical limits. While significant progress has been made, the understanding of caloric potentials in quantum systems remains incomplete. In this…
Recent experimental results point to the existence of coherent quantum phenomena in systems made of a large number of particles, despite the fact that for many-body systems the presence of decoherence is hardly negligible and emerging…
A microscopic understanding of the thermodynamic entropy in quantum systems has been a mystery ever since the invention of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, this entropy is believed to be the logarithm of the volume of phase space…
A general formulation of stochastic thermodynamics is presented for open systems exchanging energy and particles with multiple reservoirs. By introducing a partition in terms of "macrostates" (e.g. sets of "microstates"), the consequence on…
The precision of nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems is fundamentally limited, yet how quantum coherence shapes these limits remains largely unexplored. A general theoretical framework is introduced that explicitly links quantum coherence…
The microcanonical ensemble has long been a starting point for the development of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics. However, this approach presents two problems. First, it predicts that the entropy is only defined on a discrete set…
The statistical mechanical description of small systems staying in thermal equilibrium with an environment can be achieved by means of the Hamiltonian of mean force. In contrast to the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system, or…
On the basis of information theory, a new formalism of classical non-relativistic mechanics of a mass point is proposed. The particle trajectories of a general dynamical system defined on an (1+n)-dimensional smooth manifold are treated…
Quantum open systems evolve according to completely positive, trace preserving maps acting on the density operator, which can equivalently be unraveled in term of so-called quantum trajectories. These stochastic sequences of pure states…
We investigate the probability distribution of the quantum fluctuations of thermodynamic functions of finite, ballistic, phase-coherent Fermi gases. Depending on the chaotic or integrable nature of the underlying classical dynamics, on the…
Advances in controlling and measuring systems of ultra-cold atoms provided strong motivation to theoretical investigations of quantum dynamics in closed many-body systems. Fundamental questions on quantum dynamics and statistical mechanics…
Underlying the classical thermodynamic principles are analogous microscopic laws, arising from the fundamental axioms of quantum mechanics. These define quantum thermodynamic variables such as quantum work and heat and characterize the…
Typicality arguments replace the postulated mixed state ensembles of statistical mechanics with pure states sampled uniformly at random, explaining why most microstates of large systems exhibit thermal behavior. This paradigm has been…