Related papers: Trading coherence and entropy by a quantum Maxwell…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
Quantum channels, also called quantum operations, are linear, trace preserving and completely positive transformations in the space of quantum states. Such operations describe discrete time evolution of an open quantum system interacting…
Thermodynamics allows the application of Statistical Mechanics to finite and even small systems. As surface effects cannot be scaled away, one has to be careful with the standard arguments of splitting a system into two or bringing two…
We propose a new way of looking at the quantum Maxwell's demon problem in terms of conditional action. A "conditional action" on a system is a unitary time evolution, selected according to the result of a previous measurement, which can…
A precise definition for a quantum electron thermometer is given, as an electron reservoir coupled locally (e.g., by tunneling) to a sample, and brought into electrical and thermal equilibrium with it. A realistic model of a scanning…
In a macroscopic (quantum or classical) Hamiltonian system, we prove the second law of thermodynamics in the forms of the minimum work principle and the law of entropy increase, under the assumption that the initial state is described by a…
We consider the entropy production of a strongly coupled bipartite system. The total entropy production can be partitioned into various components, which we use to define local versions of the Second Law that are valid without the usual…
With the increasing interest for the control of the system at the nano and mesoscopic scales, studies have been focused on the limit of the energy dissipation in an open system by refining the concept of the Maxwell's demon. The well-known…
If a measurement process is regarded as an irreversible process, then by Second law of thermodynamics the entropy should increase after any measurement process. By the same spirit a quantum system undergoing repeated measurement should show…
For a small driven system coupled strongly to a heat bath, internal energy and exchanged heat are identified such that they obey the usual additive form of the first law. By identifying this exchanged heat with the entropy change of the…
We report on several specific student difficulties regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the context of heat engines within upper-division undergraduates thermal physics courses. Data come from ungraded written surveys, graded…
We study energetic exchanges and fluctuations in two-stroke quantum thermodynamic engines where the working fluid is represented by two multilevel quantum systems, i.e. qudits, the heat flow is allowed by relaxation with two thermal…
A heat engine undergoes a cyclic operation while in equilibrium with the net result of conversion of heat into work. Quantum effects such as superposition of states can improve an engine's efficiency by breaking detailed balance, but this…
The thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR) imposes a fundamental constraint between current fluctuations and entropy production, providing a refined formulation of the second law for micro- and nanoscale systems. Quantum violations of the…
Microcanonical thermodynamics allows the application of statistical mechanics both to finite and even small systems and also to the largest, self-gravitating ones. However, one must reconsider the fundamental principles of statistical…
We extend the translationally invariant quantum East model to an inhomogeneous chain with East/West heterojunction structure. In analogy to the quantum diffusion of substantial particles, we observe a cyclic entanglement entropy spreading…
We consider thermal relaxation process of a quantum system attached to a single or multiple reservoirs. Quantifying the degree of irreversibility by entropy production, we prove that the irreversibility of the thermal relaxation is…
An interesting class of physical systems, including those associated with life, demonstrates the ability to hold thermalization at bay and perpetuate states of high free-energy compared to a local environment. In this work, we study quantum…
Motivated by the notion that the mathematics of gravity can be reproduced from a statistical requirement of maximal entropy, we study the consequence of introducing an entropic source term in the Einstein-Hilbert action. For a spatially…
The most unstable quantum states and elementary particles possess more than a single decay channel. At the same time, it is well known that typically the decay law is not simply exponential. Therefore, it is natural to ask how to spot the…