Related papers: Not All Fluctuations are Created Equal: Spontaneou…
We investigate the thermodynamics of model systems exhibiting two-scale fractal spectra. In particular, we present both analytical and numerical studies on the temperature dependence of the vibrational and electronic specific heats. For…
Constructing a thermodynamic framework for nonequilibrium systems remains a major challenge, as quantities such as temperature and free energy often become ambiguous when inferred solely from steady-state properties. Here we take a…
What is the major difference between large and small systems? At small length-scales the dynamics is dominated by fluctuations, whereas at large scales fluctuations are irrelevant. Therefore, any thermodynamically consistent description of…
Spin-echo experiments are often said to constitute an instant of anti-thermodynamic behavior in a concrete physical system that violates the second law of thermodynamics. We argue that a proper thermodynamic treatment of the effect should…
Universality of classical thermodynamics rests on the central limit theorem, due to which, measurements of thermal fluctuations are unable to reveal detailed information regarding the microscopic structure of a macroscopic body. When small…
D.J. Evans, et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 2401 (1993)] discovered a relation, subsequently known as the Fluctuation Theorem (FT), which quantifies the probability of observing fluctuations violating the second law of thermodynamics in…
Landauer's principle is, roughly, the principle that there is an entropic cost associated with implementation of logically irreversible operations. Though widely accepted in the literature on the thermodynamics of computation, it has been…
A single mechanism, endemic to the standard model of physics, is proposed to explain wavefunction collapse, classical motion, dissipation, equilibration, and the transition from pure quantum mechanics through open system decoherence to the…
Thermodynamic behaviors in a quantum Brownian motion coupled to a classical heat bath is studied. We then define a heat operator by generalizing the stochastic energetics and show the energy balance (first law) and the upper bound of the…
Many fruitful analogies have emerged between the theories of quantum entanglement and thermodynamics, motivating the pursuit of an axiomatic description of entanglement akin to the laws of thermodynamics. A long-standing open problem has…
Traditional thermodynamics governs the behaviour of large systems that evolve between states of thermal equilibrium. For these large systems, the mean values of thermodynamic quantities (such as work, heat and entropy) provide a good…
The limit of energy saving in the control of small systems has recently attracted much interest due to the concept refinement of the Maxwell demon. Inspired by a newly proposed set of fluctuation theorems, we report the first experimental…
The experimental verification of the fluctuation theorem by Wang et al. is explained in terms of a simple Langevin dynamics. This implies that the entropy consuming trajectories found by Wang et al. are fluctuations generated by a random…
People are well aware that, inherently, certain small-scale nonchaotic particle movements are not governed by thermodynamics. Usually, such phenomena are studied by kinetic theory and their energy properties are considered "trivial". In…
This paper is a non-technical, informal presentation of our theory of the second law of thermodynamics as a law that is independent of statistical mechanics and that is derivable solely from certain simple assumptions about adiabatic…
Small thermodynamic systems exhibit peculiar behavior different from that observed in long-scale systems. Non-equilibrium processes taking place in those systems are strongly influenced by the presence of fluctuations which can be large.…
An important result in classical stochastic thermodynamics is the work fluctuation--dissipation relation (FDR), which states that the dissipated work done along a slow process is proportional to the resulting work fluctuations. Here we show…
Heat can flow from cold to hot at any phase separation. Therefore Lynden-Bell's gravo-thermal catastrophe must be reconsidered. The original objects of Thermodynamics, the separation of phases at first order phase transitions, like boiling…
With a class of quantum heat engines which consists of two-energy-eigenstate systems undergoing, respectively, quantum adiabatic processes and energy exchanges with heat baths at different stages of a cycle, we are able to clarify some…
With the help of a general expression of the entropies in extensive and nonextensive systems, some important relations between thermodynamics and statistical mechanics are revealed through the views of thermodynamics and statistic physics.…