Related papers: Thermodynamic cost of external control
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.…
Quantifying energy flows at nanometer scales promises to guide future research in a variety of disciplines, from microscopic control and manipulation, to autonomously operating molecular machines. A general understanding of the…
The second law of thermodynamics, formulated as an ultimate bound on the maximum extractable work, has been rigorously derived in multiple scenarios. However, the unavoidable limitations that emerge due to the lack of control on small…
Events in mesoscopic systems often take place at first-passage times, as is for instance the case for a colloidal particle that escapes a metastable state. An interesting question is how much work an external agent has done on a particle…
The excess work required to drive a stochastic system out of thermodynamic equilibrium through a time-dependent external perturbation is directly related to the amount of entropy produced during the driving process, allowing excess work and…
How much free energy is irreversibly lost during a thermodynamic process? For deterministic protocols, lower bounds on energy dissipation arise from the thermodynamic friction associated with pushing a system out of equilibrium in finite…
The second law of thermodynamics uses change in free energy of macroscopic systems to set a bound on performed work. Ergotropy plays a similar role in microscopic scenarios, and is defined as the maximum amount of energy that can be…
A microscopic definition of the thermodynamic entropy in an isolated quantum system must satisfy (i) additivity, (ii) extensivity and (iii) the second law of thermodynamics. We show that the diagonal entropy, which is the Shannon entropy in…
Thermodynamics at the nanoscale is known to differ significantly from its familiar macroscopic counterpart: the possibility of state transitions is not determined by free energy alone, but by an infinite family of free-energy-like…
We propose a simple theoretical model for a molecular chemical engine that catalyzes a chemical reaction and converts the free energy released by the reaction into mechanical work. Binding and unbinding processes of reactant and product…
The second law of thermodynamics implies a relationship between the net entropy export by the Earth and its internal irreversible entropy production. The application of this constraint for the purpose of understanding Earth's climate is…
Originally formulated for macroscopic machines, the laws of thermodynamics were recently shown to hold for quantum systems coupled to ideal sources of work (external classical fields) and heat (systems at equilibrium). Ongoing efforts have…
Physical systems driven away from equilibrium by an external controller dissipate heat to the environment; the excess entropy production in the thermal reservoir can be interpreted as a "cost" to transform the system in a finite time. The…
Biological and engineered systems operate by coupling function to the transfer of heat and/or particles down a thermal or chemical gradient. In idealized \textit{deterministically} driven systems, thermodynamic control can be exerted…
Statistical mechanics descriptions of the second law of thermodynamics generally imply point-like particles driven by a dissipative overall mechanism for their simultaneous time-evolution. As the number of involved particles grows larger,…
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…
For macroscopic systems, the second law of thermodynamics establishes an inequality between the amount of work performed on a system in contact with a thermal reservoir, and the change in its free energy. For microscopic systems, this…
We consider the basic, thermodynamic properties of an elementary micro-machine operating at colloidal length scales. In particular, we track and analyse the driven stochastic motion of a carefully designed micro-propeller rotating unevenly…
Perfectly rational decision-makers maximize expected utility, but crucially ignore the resource costs incurred when determining optimal actions. Here we propose an information-theoretic formalization of bounded rational decision-making…
We examine the relationship between the second law of thermodynamics and the energy eigenstates of quantum many-body systems that undergo cyclic unitary evolution. Using a numerically optimized control protocol, we analyze how the work…