Related papers: Trading coherence and entropy by a quantum Maxwell…
We prove a quantum version of the second law of thermodynamics: the (quantum) Boltzmann entropy increases if the initial (zero time) density matrix decoheres, a condition generally satisfied in Nature. It is illustrated by a model of…
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…
Using classical thermodynamics, we argue that Maxwell's demon loses its battle against Clausius as any temperature difference or other thermodynamic forces it creates is immediately compensated by spontaneous counterbalancing flows that…
We discuss the generalized second law of thermodynamics in three different systems by taking quantum corrections (logarithmic and power law) to cosmological horizon entropy as well as black hole entropy. Firstly, we consider phantom energy…
The second law of thermodynamics dictates the fundamental limits to the amount of energy and information that can be exchanged between physical systems. In this work, we extend a thermodynamic formalism describing this flow of energy and…
We present a Gedankenexperiment that leads to a violation of detailed balance if quantum mechanical transition probabilities are treated in the usual way by applying Fermi's "golden rule". This Gedankenexperiment introduces a collection of…
Building on the recent solution for the spectrum of the non-commutative well in two dimensions, the thermodynamics that follows from it is computed. In particular the focus is put on an ideal fermion gas confined to such a well. At low…
The second law of thermodynamics can be described as the non-decreasing of the entropy in the irreversible thermodynamic process. Such phenomenon can be quantitatively evaluated with the irreversible entropy generation (IEG), which was…
We give meaning to the first and second laws of thermodynamics in case of mesoscopic out-of-equilibrium systems which are driven by diffusion processes. The notion of the entropy production is analyzed. The role of the Helmholtz extremum…
We explore the thermodynamics of quantum processes (quantum channels) by axiomatically introducing the free energy for channels, defined via the quantum relative entropy with an absolutely thermal channel whose fixed output is in…
We model the dynamics of a closed quantum system brought out of mechanical equilibrium, undergoing a non-driven, spontaneous, thermodynamic transformation. In particular, we consider a quantum particle in a box with a moving and insulating…
Thought experiments like Maxwell's Demon or the Feynman-Smoluchowski Ratchet can help in pursuing the microscopic origin of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here we present a more sophisticated physical system than a ratchet, consisting of…
On the one hand, the dissipated heat of a thermodynamic work extraction process upper bounds the non-predictive information, which the associated system encodes about its environment. Thus, emergent information processing capabilities can…
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…
The second law of ordinary thermodynamics and the second law of steady state thermodynamics, as proposed by Oono and Paniconi, are investigated from the microscopic point of view for the open quantum system. Based on the H-theorem of…
The Second Law of Thermodynamics asserts that the physical entropy of an adiabatic system is an increasing function in time. In this paper we will study a more stringent version of this law, according to which the entropy should not only…
This paper is a natural continuation of our previous paper arXiv:1011.4173 . We illustrated earlier that in classical Hamilton mechanics, for overwhelming majority of real chaotic macroscopic systems, alignment of their thermodynamic time…
Second law of thermodynamics imposes that in any thermodynamic process the entropy production must be nonnegative. In continuum physics such a requirement is fulfilled by postulating the constitutive equations which represent the material…
Recently Allahverdyan and Nieuwenhuizen (cond-mat/0006404) argued that the second law of thermodynamics may be violated in a quantum system as a "consequence of quantum coherence in the presence of the slightly off-equilibrium nature of the…
The minimal-coupling quantum heat engine is a thermal machine consisting of an explicit energy storage system, heat baths, and a working body, which alternatively couples to subsystems through discrete strokes -- energy-conserving two-body…