Related papers: Constructor Theory of Thermodynamics
I argue here that both the first and second laws of thermodynamics, generally understood to be quintessentially physical in nature, can be equally well described as being about certain types of information without the need to invoke…
[...] By the beginning of the 20th century, the principles of thermodynamics were summarized into the so-called four laws, which were, as it turns out, definitive negative answers to the doomed quests for perpetual motion machines. As a…
When thermodynamics is understood as the science (or art) of constructing effective models of natural phenomena by choosing a minimal level of description capable of capturing the essential features of the physical reality of interest, the…
We reconsider the basic building blocks of classical phenomenological thermodynamics. While doing so we show that the zeroth law is a redundant postulate for the theory by deriving it from the first and the second laws. This is in stark…
To reconstruct thermodynamics based on the microscopic laws is one of the most important unfulfilled goals of statistical physics. Here, we show that the first law and the second law for adiabatic processes are derived from an assumption…
From a new rigorous formulation of the general axiomatic foundations of thermodynamics we derive an operational definition of entropy that responds to the emergent need in many technological frameworks to understand and deploy thermodynamic…
The limit of small entropy production is reached in relaxing systems long after preparation, and in stationary driven systems in the limit of small driving power. Surprisingly, for extended systems this limit is not in general 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…
Macroscopic nonextensive thermodynamics is studied without recourse to microscopic statistical mechanics. It is shown that if entropy is nonextensive, the concept of physical temperature introduced through the generalized zeroth law of…
Fluctuation theorems and the second law of thermodynamics are powerful relations constraining the behavior of out-of-equilibrium systems. While there exist generalizations of these relations to feedback controlled quantum systems, their…
We study the coarse-graining approach to derive a generator for the evolution of an open quantum system over a finite time interval. The approach does not require a secular approximation but nevertheless generally leads to a…
We study thermodynamic limits when controllers operate with only partial observability of internal correlations in multipartite systems. Understanding the costs imposed by lack of information is crucial in settings where agents must act…
Isothermal processes of a finitely extended, driven quantum system in contact with an infinite heat bath are studied from the point of view of quantum statistical mechanics. Notions like heat flux, work and entropy are defined for…
We investigate the laws of thermodynamics in an accelerating universe driven by dark energy with a time-dependent equation of state. In the case we consider that the physically relevant part of the Universe is that envelopped by the…
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…
An axiomatic approach to macroeconomics based on the mathematical structure of thermodynamics is presented. It deduces relations between aggregate properties of an economy, concerning quantities and flows of goods and money, prices and the…
Information-theoretic approaches provide a promising avenue for extending the laws of thermodynamics to the nanoscale. Here, we provide a general fundamental lower limit, valid for systems with an arbitrary Hamiltonian and in contact with…
An irreversible thermodynamical theory of solids is presented where the kinematic quantities are defined in an automatically objective way. Namely, auxiliary elements like reference frame, reference time and reference configuration are…
We show that fundamental thermodynamic relations can be derived from deterministic mechanics for a non-ergodic system. This extend a similar derivation for ergodic systems and suggests that ergodicity should not be considered as a…
The generalized second laws of quantum thermodynamics are usually formulated in terms of R\'enyi divergences and the associated family of generalized free energies. In catalytic thermal transformations, this framework typically certifies…