Related papers: Fast equilibrium switch of a micro mechanical osci…
The study of quantum thermodynamics is key to the development of quantum thermal machines. In contrast to most of the previous proposals based on discrete strokes, here we consider a working substance that is permanently coupled to two or…
A thermal analogue of the classical brachistochrone problem, which minimizes the connection time between two equilibrium states of harmonically confined Brownian particles, has recently been solved theoretically. Here we report its…
Atomic force microscopy cantilevers are often, intentionally or not, heated at their extremity. We describe a model to compute the resulting temperature field in the cantilever and in the surrounding fluid on a wide temperature range. In…
We provide insights into energetics of a Brownian oscillator in contact with a heat bath and driven by an external unbiased time-periodic force that takes the system out of thermodynamic equilibrium. Solving the corresponding Langevin…
We propose a general framework to study transformations that drive an underdamped Brownian particle in contact with a thermal bath from an equilibrium state to a new one in an arbitrarily short time. To this end, we make use of a time and…
The exact master equation for a harmonic oscillator coupled to a heat bath, derived recently by Hu, Paz and Zhang, is simplified by taking the weak-coupling, late-time limit. The unique time-independent solution to this simplified master…
The stochastic dynamics of the damped harmonic oscillator in a heat bath is simulated with an algorithm that is exact for time steps of arbitrary size. Exact analytical results are given for correlation functions and power spectra in the…
We study the speed of fluctuation of a quantum system around its thermodynamic equilibrium state, and show that the speed will be extremely small for almost all times in typical thermodynamic cases. The setting considered here is that of a…
In this article we formulate frictionless atom cooling in harmonic traps as a time-optimal control problem, permitting imaginary values of the trap frequency for trasient time intervals during which the trap becomes an expulsive parabolic…
The quantum dynamics of a low-dimensional system in contact with a large but finite harmonic bath is theoretically investigated by coarse-graining the bath into a reduced set of effective energy states. In this model, the couplings between…
Interferometry can be viewed generally as the measurement of a relative phase between two subsystems. I consider the problem of interfering a quantum resource state with a thermal bath, drawing a precise connection between the athermality…
We have studied the properties of a classical $N_S$-body system coupled to a bath containing $N_B$-body harmonic oscillators, employing an $(N_S+N_B)$ model which is different from most of the existing models with $N_S=1$. We have performed…
We address the problem of understanding from first principles the conditions under which a quantum system equilibrates rapidly with respect to a concrete observable. On the one hand previously known general upper bounds on the time scales…
Shrinking spintronic devices to the nanoscale ultimately requires localized control of individual atomic magnetic moments. At these length scales, the exchange interaction plays important roles, such as in the stabilization of…
The meaning of temperature in nonequilibrium thermodynamics is considered by using a forced harmonic oscillator in a heat bath, where we have two effective temperatures for the position and the momentum, respectively. We invent a concrete…
Oscillate boiling offers excellent heat transfer at temperatures above the Leidenfrost temperature. Here we realize an electrical microheater with an integrated thermal probe and resolve the thermal cycle during the high-frequency bubble…
A common use for atomic force microscopy is to quantify local forces through tip-sample interactions between the probe tip and a sample surface. The accuracy of these measurements depends on the accuracy to which the cantilever spring…
We study the problem of the approach to equilibrium in a macroscopic quantum system in an abstract setting. We prove that, for a typical choice of "nonequilibrium subspace", any initial state (from the energy shell) thermalizes, and in fact…
Single-qubit thermometry presents the simplest tool to measure the temperature of thermal baths with reduced invasivity. At thermal equilibrium, the temperature uncertainty is linked to the heat capacity of the qubit, however the best…
In this article, the optimal control problem for a harmonic oscillator with an inequality constraint is considered. The applied energy of the oscillator during a fixed final time period is used as the performance criterion. The analytical…