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Related papers: Optimal processes for probabilistic work extractio…

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Thermalization processes degrade the states of any working medium, turning any initial state into a passive state from which no work can be extracted. Recently, it has been shown that this degradation can be avoided if two identical…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-08 Kyrylo Simonov , Saptarshi Roy , Tamal Guha , Zoltán Zimborás , Giulio Chiribella

Constraints on work extraction are fundamental to our operational understanding of the thermodynamics of both classical and quantum systems. In the quantum setting, finite-time control operations typically generate coherence in the…

We consider locally thermal states (for two qubits) with certain amount of quantum entanglement present between them. Unlike previous protocols we show how work can be extracted by performing local unitary operations on this state by…

Inspired by the primary goal of quantum thermodynamics -- to characterize quantum signatures and leverage their benefits in thermodynamic scenarios -- , we design a work extraction game within a bipartite framework that exhibits a quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-09-15 Tanmoy Biswas , Chandan Datta , Luis Pedro García-Pintos

The Jarzynski equality allows the calculation of free-energy differences using values of work measured from nonequilibrium trajectories. The number of trajectories required to accurately estimate free-energy differences in this way grows…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-05-13 Stephen Whitelam

Understanding and manipulating work fluctuations in microscale and nanoscale systems are of both fundamental and practical interest. For example, aspects of work fluctuations will be an important factor in designing nanoscale heat engines.…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-11-26 Gaoyang Xiao , Jiangbin Gong

We consider the standard thermodynamic processes with constraints, but with additional uncertainty about the control parameters. Motivated by inductive reasoning, we assign prior distribution that provides a rational guess about likely…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2014-04-03 Preety Aneja , Ramandeep S. Johal

Optimal transport theory, originally developed in the 18th century for civil engineering, has since become a powerful optimization framework across disciplines, from generative AI to cell biology. In physics, it has recently been shown to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-02 Shingo Oikawa , Yohei Nakayama , Sosuke Ito , Takahiro Sagawa , Shoichi Toyabe

We study work extraction processes mediated by finite-time interactions with an ambient bath -- \emph{partial thermalizations} -- as continuous time Markov processes for two-level systems. Such a stochastic process results in fluctuations…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-05-05 Maria Quadeer , Kamil Korzekwa , Marco Tomamichel

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy production cannot be negative. Recent developments concerning uncertainty relations in stochastic thermodynamics, such as thermodynamic uncertainty relations and speed limits, have…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-10-09 Tomohiro Nishiyama , Yoshihiko Hasegawa

In open quantum systems, a clear distinction between work and heat is often challenging, and extending the quantum Jarzynski equality to systems evolving under general quantum channels beyond unitality remains an open problem in quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-08-10 Akira Sone , Yi-Xiang Liu , Paola Cappellaro

Extracting useful work from quantum systems is a fundamental problem in quantum thermodynamics. In scenarios where rapid protocols are desired -- whether due to practical constraints or deliberate design choices -- a fundamental trade-off…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-23 Shoki Sugimoto , Takahiro Sagawa , Ryusuke Hamazaki

Work is a process-based quantity, and its measurement typically requires interaction with a measuring device multiple times. While classical systems allow for non-invasive and accurate measurements, quantum systems present unique challenges…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-06-17 Giulia Rubino , Karen V. Hovhannisyan , Paul Skrzypczyk

Adaptive systems -- such as a biological organism gaining survival advantage, an autonomous robot executing a functional task, or a motor protein transporting intracellular nutrients -- must model the regularities and stochasticity in their…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2021-04-13 A. B. Boyd , J. P. Crutchfield , M. Gu

The possibility of stating the second law of thermodynamics in terms of the increasing behaviour of a physical property establishes a connection between that branch of physics and the theory of algebraic inequalities. We use this connection…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-09-07 Andrés Vallejo

Thermodynamics constrains changes to the energy of a system, both deliberate and random, via its first and second laws. When the system is not in equilibrium, fluctuation theorems such as the Jarzynski equality further restrict the…

In quantum systems which satisfy the hypothesis of equal weights for eigenstates [4], the maximum work principle (for extremely slow and relatively fast operation) is derived by using quantum dynamics alone. This may be a crucial step in…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 Hal Tasaki

This work focuses on the response to an external field of a Brownian particle submerged in an Ohmic quantum thermal bath. The field only affects the dynamics of the central particle without affecting the thermal reservoir. The thermodynamic…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-11-12 Pedro J. Colmenares

The fluctuation-dissipation relation for the classical definition of work is extended to thermally isolated systems, in classical and quantum realms. From this, the optimal work variance is calculated, showing it achieves its minimum…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-11-01 Pierre Nazé

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…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-09-10 Kai Ueltzhöffer