Related papers: Information-theoretic equilibrium and observable t…
Understanding how an isolated quantum system evolves toward a thermal state from an initial state far from equilibrium such as one prepared by a global quantum quench has attracted significant interest in recent years. This phenomenon can…
Statistical equilibrium configurations are important in the physics of macroscopic systems with a large number of constituent degrees of freedom. They are expected to be crucial also in discrete quantum gravity, where dynamical spacetime…
Information theory provides shortcuts which allow one to deal with complex systems. The basic idea one uses for this purpose is the maximum entropy principle developed by Jaynes. However, an extension of this maximum entropy principle to…
Thermodynamics is commonly presented as a theory of macroscopic systems in stable equilibrium, built upon assumptions of extensivity and scaling with system size. In this paper, we present a universal formulation of the elementary…
The irreversible entropy increase described by the second law of thermodynamics is fundamentally tied to thermalization and the emergence of equilibrium. In the first part of our work (Ref: arXiv.2503.04152), we constructed an isolated gas…
Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians possessing a discrete real spectrum motivated a remarkable research activity in quantum physics and new insights have emerged. In this paper we formulate concepts of statistical thermodynamics for systems…
Macroscopic quantum superpositions are widely believed to be unobservable because large systems cannot be perfectly isolated from their environments. Here, we show that even under perfect isolation, intrinsic unitary dynamics with the…
The theory of small-system thermodynamics was originally developed to extend the laws of thermodynamics to length scales of nanometers. Here we review this "nanothermodynamics," and stress how it also applies to large systems that subdivide…
The approach to thermal equilibrium, or thermalization, in isolated quantum systems is among the most fundamental problems in statistical physics. Recent theoretical studies have revealed that thermalization in isolated quantum systems has…
It is known that temperature estimates of macroscopic systems in equilibrium are most precise when their energy fluctuations are large. However, for nanoscale systems deviations from standard thermodynamics arise due to their interactions…
Gibbs and Boltzmann definitions of temperature agree only in the macroscopic limit. The ambiguity in identifying the equilibrium temperature of a finite sized `small' system exchanging energy with a bath is usually understood as a…
The approach to a substantiation of thermodynamics is offered. A conservative system of interacting elements, which is not in equilibrium, is used as a model. This system is then split into small subsystems that are accepted as being in…
The Boltzmann and Gibbs approaches to statistical mechanics have very different definitions of equilibrium and entropy. The problems associated with this are discussed and it is suggested that they can be resolved, to produce a version of…
We provide here an explicit example of Khinchin's idea that the validity of equilibrium statistical mechanics in high dimensional systems does not depend on the details of the dynamics. This point of view is supported by extensive numerical…
A quantum statistical expression for the entropy of a nonequilibrium system is defined so as to be consistent with Gibbs' relation, and is shown to corresponds to dynamical variable by introducing analogous to the Heisenberg picture in…
We develop a method using a coarse graining of the energy fluctuations of an equilibrium quantum system which produces simple parameterizations for the behaviour of the system. As an application, we use these methods to gain more…
We show that, when we study the coexistence of general relativity with thermodynamics, some physical properties that are usually thought of as holographic and lying in the domain of quantum gravity can actually be accessed even at the…
This work assembles some basic theoretical elements on thermal equilibrium, stability conditions, and fluctuation theory in self-gravitating systems illustrated with a few examples. Thermodynamics deals with states that have settled down…
From a new rigorous formulation of the general axiomatic foundations of thermodynamics we derive an operational definition of entropy that responds to the emergent need in many technological frameworks to understand and deploy thermodynamic…
The 2nd law of thermodynamics yields an irreversible increase in entropy until thermal equilibrium is achieved. This irreversible increase is often assumed to require large and complex systems to emerge from the reversible microscopic laws…