Related papers: Second law of thermodynamics with quantum memory
The Carnot engine sets an upper limit to the efficiency of a practical heat engine. An arbitrary irreversible engine is sometimes believed to behave closely as the Curzon-Ahlborn engine. Efficiency of the latter is obtained commonly by…
We discuss the thermodynamics of closed quantum systems driven out of equilibrium by a change in a control parameter and undergoing a unitary process. We compare the work actually done on the system with the one that would be performed…
In the scientific and engineering literature, the second law of thermodynamics is expressed in terms of the behavior of entropy in reversible and irreversible processes. According to the prevailing statistical mechanics interpretation the…
Quantum systems strongly coupled to many-body systems equilibrate to the reduced state of a global thermal state, deviating from the local thermal state of the system as it occurs in the weak-coupling limit. Taking this insight as a…
Toward the formulation of the operational approach to quantum thermodynamics, the heat-up operator is explicitly constructed. This quantum operation generates for a generic system an irreversible transformation from a pure ground state at…
The first law of thermodynamics imposes not just a constraint on the energy-content of systems in extreme quantum regimes, but also symmetry-constraints related to the thermodynamic processing of quantum coherence. We show that this…
Various engine types are thermodynamically equivalent in the quantum limit of small 'engine action'. Our previous derivation of the equivalence is restricted to Markovian heat baths and to implicit classical work repository (e.g., laser…
We introduce a new quantum heat engine, in which the working medium is a quantum system with a discrete level and a continuum. Net work done by this engine is calculated and discussed. The results show that this quantum heat engine behaves…
Mesoscopic thermoelectric heat engine is much anticipated as a device that allows us to utilize with high efficiency wasted heat inaccessible by conventional heat engines. However, the derivation of the heat current in this engine seems to…
The association of information with entropy has been argued on plausibility arguments involving the operation of imaginary engines and beings, and it is not a universal theorem. In this paper, a theorem by Charles Bennett on reversible…
Quantum thermodynamics supplies a consistent description of quantum heat engines and refrigerators up to the level of a single few level system coupled to the environment. Once the environment is split into three;a hot, cold and work…
Landauer's principle provides a perspective on the physical meaning of information as well as on the minimum working cost of information processing. Whereas most studies have related the decrease in entropy during a computationally…
Considering an entropy-based division of energy transferred into heat and work, we develop an alternative theoretical framework for the thermodynamic analysis of two-level systems. When comparing these results with those obtained under the…
Developments in the thermodynamics of small quantum systems envisage non-classical thermal machines. In this scenario, energy fluctuations play a relevant role in the description of irreversibility. We experimentally implement a quantum…
Fluctuation theorems impose fundamental bounds in the statistics of the entropy production, with the second law of thermodynamics being the most famous. Using information theory, we quantify the information of entropy production and find an…
Systems that are driven by a randomly timed, external protocol can seemingly violate the second law of thermodynamics. We show that this thermodynamic paradox is resolved if the outcome of the random time is stored in a memory device.…
Based on quantum statistical mechanics and microscopic quantum dynamics, we prove Planck's and Kelvin's principles for macroscopic systems in a general and realistic setting. We consider a hybrid quantum system that consists of the…
Recent research on the thermodynamic arrow of time, at the microscopic scale, has questioned the universality of its direction. Theoretical studies showed that quantum correlations can be used to revert the natural heat flow (from the hot…
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open…
Thermodynamics is the phenomenological theory of heat and work. Here we analyze to what extent quantum thermodynamic relations are immune to the underlying mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. As a main result, we show that the…