Related papers: Non-hermitian quantum thermodynamics
Quantum thermodynamics of a trapped two-level atom under the influence of a controlled light field is investigated. The population dynamics and decoherency function are obtained and discussed. The characteristic functions, work distribution…
We prove the second law of thermodynamics and the nonequilibirum fluctuation theorem for pure quantum states.The entire system obeys reversible unitary dynamics, where the initial state of the heat bath is not the canonical distribution but…
We propose a method to evaluate general thermodynamic fluctuations in open quantum systems, based on performing a two-point measurement scheme on the system using dynamics-dependent thermodynamic observables. Our approach allows one to…
Quantum thermodynamics investigates how robust the second law of thermodynamics serves as the unique fundamental law in the small quantum world. To tackle this problem, the quantum coherence constitutes a major difficulty of investigations,…
For macroscopic systems, the second law of thermodynamics establishes an inequality between the amount of work performed on a system in contact with a thermal reservoir, and the change in its free energy. For microscopic systems, this…
Fluctuations of thermodynamic observables, such as heat and work, contain relevant information on the underlying physical process. These fluctuations are however not taken into account in the traditional laws of thermodynamics. While the…
We describe recent progress towards deriving the Fundamental Laws of thermodynamics (the 0th, 1st and 2nd Law) from nonequilibrium quantum statistical mechanics in simple, yet physically relevant models. Along the way, we clarify some basic…
We show that the quantum Jarzynski equality generalizes to $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics with unbroken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry. In the regime of broken $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry the Jarzynski equality does not hold as also the…
Interactions of quantum systems with their environment play a crucial role in resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics in the microscopic regime. Here, we analyze the possible state transitions in the presence of "small" heat baths…
We illustrate recent results concerning the validity of the work fluctuation theorem in open quantum systems [M. Campisi, P. Talkner, and P. H\"{a}nggi, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 102}, 210401 (2009)], by applying them to a solvable model of an…
When a thermally isolated system performs a driving process in the quasistatic regime, its variation of average energy is equal to its quasistatic work. Even though presenting this simple definition, few attempts have been made to describe…
We establish the foundations of a nonequilibrium theory of quantum thermodynamics for noninteracting open quantum systems strongly coupled to their reservoirs within the framework of the nonequilibrium Green functions (NEGF). The energy of…
The validity of the Jarzynski equation for a very simple, exactly solvable quantum system is analyzed. The implications of two different definitions of work proposed in the literature are investigated. The first one derives from…
A general quantum theory encompassing Mechanics, Thermodynamics and irreversible dynamics is presented in two parts. The first part is concerned exclusively with the description of the states of any individual physical system. It is based…
We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…
We propose a new form of the Second Law inequality that defines a tight bound for extractable work from the non-equilibrium quantum state. In classical thermodynamics, the optimal work is given by the difference of free energy, what…
Thermodynamics plays an important role both in the foundations of physics and in technological applications. An operational perspective adopted in recent years is to formulate it as a quantum resource theory. At the core of this theory is…
Quantum decoherence is seen as an undesired source of irreversibility that destroys quantum resources. Quantum coherences seem to be a property that vanishes at thermodynamic equilibrium. Away from equilibrium, quantum coherences challenge…
In this tutorial, we present the definition, interpretation and properties of some of the main quasiprobabilities that can describe the statistics of measurement outcomes evaluated at two or more times. Such statistics incorporate the…
Despite its enormous empirical success, the formalism of quantum theory still raises fundamental questions: why is nature described in terms of complex Hilbert spaces, and what modifications of it could we reasonably expect to find in some…