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We consider an isolated, macroscopic quantum system. Let H be a micro-canonical "energy shell," i.e., a subspace of the system's Hilbert space spanned by the (finitely) many energy eigenstates with energies between E and E + delta E. The…

Thermodynamics is based on the notions of energy and entropy. While energy is the elementary quantity governing physical dynamics, entropy is the fundamental concept in information theory. In this work, starting from first principles, we…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2017-10-25 Bernhard Altaner

Thermodynamics makes definite predictions about the thermal behavior of macroscopic systems in and out of equilibrium. Statistical mechanics aims to derive this behavior from the dynamics and statistics of the atoms and molecules making up…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-03-28 Sheldon Goldstein , David A. Huse , Joel L. Lebowitz , Pablo Sartori

When a physical system is put in contact with a very large thermal bath, it undergoes a dissipative (i.e., an apparently irreversible) process that leads to thermal equilibrium. This dynamical process can be described fully within quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-05-13 Valerio Scarani

We introduce a constructive framework for assigning thermodynamic structure to an arbitrary data system from its measured microstates. Starting from an empirical distribution over configurations, we first infer a data-driven energy function…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-04-29 George-Rafael Domenikos , Lock Yue Chew , Victoria Leong

The intersection of thermodynamics, quantum theory and gravity has revealed many profound insights, all the while posing new puzzles. In this article, we discuss an extension of equilibrium statistical mechanics and thermodynamics…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2019-08-13 Isha Kotecha

Lack of knowledge about the detailed many-particle motion on the microscopic scale is a key issue in any theoretical description of a macroscopic experiment. For systems at or close to thermal equilibrium, statistical mechanics provides a…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2016-03-03 Peter Reimann

We show how the macroscopic state variables pressure, entropy and temperature of equilibrium thermodynamics can be consistently derived from the (quantum) chaotic spectral structure of one or two particles in two-dimensional domains. This…

A strongly non-integrable system is expected to satisfy the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, which states that the expectation value of an observable in an energy eigenstate is the same as the thermal value. This must be revised if the…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-11-04 Keith R. Fratus , Mark Srednicki

Thermodynamical equilibrium is considered as an effect of quantum entangling of the vacuum state of a system. An explicit mathematical model of multi- particle entangled pure quantum states is developed and analyzed. In the framework, the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 A. Yu. Bogdanov , Yu. I. Bogdanov , K. A. Valiev

The use of statistical methods to model gravitational systems is crucial to physics practice, but the extent to which thermodynamics and statistical mechanics genuinely apply to these systems is a contentious issue. This paper provides new…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-02-04 Lorenzo Lorenzetti

Understanding thermodynamics far from equilibrium at the quantum scale remains a fundamental challenge, particularly in the presence of quantum coherence. Here we develop a first-principles framework for nonequilibrium quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-02-11 Md Manirul Ali , Po-Wen Chen

Information is instrumental in our understanding of thermodynamics. Their interplay has been studied through completely degenerate Hamiltonians whereby the informational contributions to thermodynamic transformations can be isolated. In…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-10 Benjamin Stratton , Chung-Yun Hsieh , Paul Skrzypczyk

The thermal or equilibrium ensemble is one of the most ubiquitous states of matter. For models comprised of many locally interacting quantum particles, it describes a wide range of physical situations, relevant to condensed matter physics,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-12-06 Álvaro M. Alhambra

Concepts like `typicality' and the `eigenstate thermalization hypothesis' aim at explaining the apparent equilibration of quantum systems, possibly after a very long time. However, these concepts are not concerned with the specific way in…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-12-12 Lars Knipschild , Jochen Gemmer

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…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-07-29 Marco Cattaneo , Marco Baldovin , Dario Lucente , Paolo Muratore-Ginanneschi , Angelo Vulpiani

If we prepare an isolated, interacting quantum system in an eigenstate and perturb a local observable at an initial time, its expectation value will relax towards a thermal expectation value, even though the time evolution of the system is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-06-04 Tobias Helbig , Tobias Hofmann , Ronny Thomale , Martin Greiter

We investigate fundamental connections between thermodynamics and quantum information theory. First, we show that the operational framework of thermal operations is nonequivalent to the framework of Gibbs-preserving maps, and we comment on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-07-13 Philippe Faist

Classical thermodynamics is built with the concept of equilibrium states. However, it is less clear how equilibrium thermodynamics emerges through the dynamics that follows the principle of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we develop a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-12-18 Md. Manirul Ali , Wei-Ming Huang , Wei-Min Zhang

Information based thermodynamic logic is revisited. It consists of two parts: Part A applies the modern theory of probability in which an arbitrary convex function \phi is employed as an analytic "device" to express information as…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-12-07 Bing Miao , Hong Qian , Yong-Shi Wu